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WILLIAM 

SHAKESPEARE 

PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF: 



REVELATION OF THE POET 

IN THE CAREER AND CHARACTER OF ONE 
OF HIS OWN DRAMATIC HEROES. 

/ 
By ROBERT WATERS, 

AUTHOR OF A *' LIFE OF WILLIAM COBBETT," ETC. 



" Sadly I survive, 
To mock the expectation of the world, 
To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out 
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down 
After my seeming." 



I^Ht f 



NEW YORK: 
WORTHINGTON COMPANY, 

747 Broadway. 



TT^r 



COPYRIGHT, 1888, BV 

ROBERT WATERS. 

A II rights reserved. 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Portrayed by Himself. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Universal interest in the person- 
ality OF THE poet WHAT THE WRITER 

intends to show. 

IT is said that ten thousand different 
essays, pamphlets and books have 
been printed and published concerning 
the life and writings of William Shake- 
speare. This is something unparalleled 
in the history of literature. No other 
name among men of letters has created 
such an interest. What an amazing at- 
traction, what a boundless fascination, 
must people find in the life and char- 
acter of this man ! Men of every nation, 
of every rank, are captivated by him. 
All the world wish to know the ante- 
cedents, the family, the training, of the 

I 



2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 

man who produced the most superb 
dramas in literature — whence he derived 
that marvellous power of dramatic presen- 
tation, that wonderful skill, knowledge, 
and wisdom* as poet, philosopher, and 
dramatist, which he displays in all his 
works. All men are amazed at the cir- 
cumstance, that a man of the people, of 
no particular education, of no remarkable 
lineage, should have surpassed all other 
men in intellectual power, in the richness 
and greatness of his productions ; — all 
men, I say, except a few erratic individ- 
uals in recent years, whose extraordinary 
views are not supported by any foun- 
dation worth a moment's consideration. ^ 
People of foreign nations are so much 
interested in him, that they learn English 
merely to read his works in the original ; 
and there is hardly a language capable of 
literary expression into which these works 
have not been again and again translated. < 
He is called the father of German litera- 
ture, and even at the present day is more 
read and studied in Germany than any 
native author. His birthplace, now the ^^ 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 3 

property of the English nation, has be- 
come a Mecca to which pilgrims from the 
four corners of the world resort ; the re- 
lation and explanation of the events of 
his life form one of the great problems 
of modern times ; and societies for the 
study and elucidation of his writings 
have been organized in every part of the 
civilized world. He is the glory of the 
English-speaking race, and every mem- 
ber of that race, from one end of the 
world to the other, is more or less indebted 
to him for what he is, for what culture 
or enlightenment he possesses, for what 
largeness of view, superior power of ex- 
pression, or increased social and intellec- 
tual advantages, he enjoys ; — indeed, I 
may say that mankind is indebted to him 
for a richer and more copious speech, a 
larger social and intellectual life, and a 
more abundant fund of rational amuse- 
ment, than it ever possessed before. 

Such is the man whom I propose to 
unveil, as delineating his own character 
and career in the person of one of his 
dramatic heroes ; such is the man whose 



4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

life I intend to unfold to my readers, 
without the aid of a cipher or any remark- 
able hocus-pocus, in such plain characters 
that all the world may read and perceive 
its truth. When the life and character 
of a literary man cannot be found in 
the records of his friends and acquain- 
tances, and no personal memoirs of him 
are extant, the only proper place to look 
for him is in his works ; and when the 
known incidents of his career, and the 
known traits of his character, agree in a 
remarkable manner with those of one, 
and only one, of his heroes, it is natural 
to infer that he delineated himself in that 
hero, and that that delineation must 
afford a better view of him than any 
other that can be obtained. I shall show 
that in the very plays in which that 
extraordinary gentleman, Mr. Ignatius 
Donnelly, has discovered a cipher show- 
ing that they were written by Lord Ba- 
con, the real author, Shakespeare, reveals 
himself, his life, his character, as plainly 
and purposely as any author ever reveal- 
ed himself in one of his works. I shall 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 5 

show that the identity of this character 
with the Poet holds good through three 
different plays ; nay, through four differ- 
ent plays ; and to the man who wishes to 
make some personal acquaintance with 
Shakespeare, this presentation of him 
will, I am confident, afford much more 
satisfaction, and give a far better view of 
the man, than any or all of his meager 
biographies. So sure am I of this, that 
I think every lover of Shakespeare will, 
after reading this essay, not only peruse 
the plays in question with increased sat- 
isfaction and delight, but experience a 
feeling of thankfulness toward the writ- 
er for having rescued our beloved Poet 
from even a suspicion of foul play, and 
for having silenced forever this vain and 
pernicious babble about Bacon's author- 
ship of his plays. 



6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHAPTER IL 

THE ARGUMENT STATED THE HISTORICAL 

DATA OF THE PLAY. 

SOMETIMES a truth is discovered 
by long years of labor and patient 
study; sometimes by an unexpected 
flash of thought. In the latter case, the 
investigation and proof follow the dis- 
covery ; in the former, they precede it. 
I had taken up Huth's " Life of Henry 
Thomas Buckle "—which is a good ac- 
count of a remarkable man, for whose 
character and genius I entertain the 
deepest respect, and over whose un- 
timely fate I have shed tears of regret — 
and was running over it for the second 
time, when I came to this passage, 
quoted to show the wide scope and versa- 
tility of Buckle's talents : 

Hear him but reason in divinity, 
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish 



FOR TEA YED B Y ///A/SELF. 7 

You would desire the king were made a prelate : 

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 

You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study : 

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 

A fearful battle rendered you in music : 

Turn him to any cause of policy, 

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 

Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks. 

The air, a chartered libertine, is still. 

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, 

To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences. 

On reading this, I said to myself, 
^' That can suit no man except Shake- 
speare himself : whence are these lines?" 
On looking up the passage, I found it 
formed part of the Archbishop's descrip- 
tion of Prince Henry, now become king, 
in the First Act of Kin£- Henry the Fifth ; 
and I made up my mind, from that in- 
stant, that the character was none other 
than that of Shakespeare himself. I 
knew what Prince Henry was, and knew 
something of him as Henry the Fifth; 
but had not, till then, dreamt of him 
as other than an historical character. 
Now, the more carefully I studied Shake- 
speare's portraiture of him, the more I 



§ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

became convinced that the character was 
a portrait of the Poet himself; and if 
the reader will have the patience to fol- 
low me for a few pages, I hope to con- 
vince him likewise of its truth. 

From all that we know of Shake- 
speare's early history, that of Prince 
Henry corresponds to it very closely; 
and from all that we know of his later his- 
tory, the correspondence will be found to 
be, in a sense, equally close. The char- 
acter, companions, and habits of life of 
Prince Henry were such as are known to 
have been those of the youthful Shake- 
speare ; and the character, companions, 
and habits of his later years were such 
as correspond with those of the tri- 
umphant and all-surpassing English 
Poet. We know that Shakespeare was 
a roysterer in his early days ; that his 
'' youth had wandered faulty and irreg- 
ular " ; that he loved good cheer, merry 
companions, and a free and easy life ; 
that he was fond of lively conversation 
and wit-combats, and that he excelled in 
these ; that he got into trouble in one, 



POR TRA YED E Y HIMSELF. g 

at least, of his escapades with these com- 
panions, and that, like the Prince, he suf- 
fered at the hands of judicial authority. 
In fact, the Poet could hardly avoid per- 
ceiving these remarkable coincidences, 
and could hardly avoid recalling his own 
experiences while delineating those of 
the Prince. The Prince having been such 
a man as he had been in his youth ; his 
experiences and diversions having been 
similar to his own ; his companions and 
adventures having been of a like nature, 
it was natural that he should at once 
make up his mind to delineate his own 
character and companions, his own life 
and adventures, in those of the Prince. 

Under these circumstances, the con- 
clusion inevitably forces itself upon the 
mind, that the Poet, in writing a play in 
which this character is a leading per- 
sonage, drew upon his own experience, 
and painted himself in this character. 
As this has been done by so many 
others, is there anything more natural 
than that he too should, in a work of art, 
have availed himself of this privilege ? 



10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and is there anything surprising in the 
fact, that the characters he here drew 
should be among the most life-like, most 
interesting and strongest ever drawn by 
him ? Is there anything more natural 
than that one of these characters, his 
favorite and most strongly marked his- 
torical character, whose career he follows 
through three different plays, should be 
nothing more, in disposition, manner, 
and conversation, than a delineation of 
his own ? 

Holinshed, Shakespeare's great author- 
ity, from whom he derives the main 
events in Prince Henry's career, thus de- 
scribes the Prince : *^ Indeed, he was 
youthfully given, grown to audacity ; 
and had chosen him companions, with 
whom he spent the time in such recrea- 
tions and delights as he fancied. Yet it 
would seem, by the report of some 
writers, that his behavior was not offen- 
sive, or at least tending to the damage of 
anybody ; since he had a care to avoid 
doing of wrong and to tender his affec- 
tions within the tract of virtue, whereby 



POiTTRA YED B Y HIMSELP, 1 1 

he opened unto himself a ready passage 
of good liking among the prudent sort, 
and was beloved of such as could dis- 
cern his disposition." And elsewhere the 
same chronicler says : '' This king, even 
at first appointing with himself to show 
that princely honors should change 
public manners, determined to put on 
him the shape of a new man. For where- 
as aforetime he had made himself a com- 
panion unto misruly mates of dissolute 
order and life, he now banished them all 
from his presence ; and in their places 
chose men of gravity, wit, and high pol- 
icy, by whose wise counsel he might at 
all times rule to his honor and dignity." 
And old Caxton speaks of him as '' a 
noble prince after he was king and 
crowned ; howbeit, in his youth he had 
been wild, reckless, and spared noth- 
ing of his lusts and desires." 

Human nature is the same in prince 
and peasant ; men and women are all 
moved by the same passions and desires, 
no matter what their rank or station ; 
and Shakespeare saw in this prince a man 



1 2 WILLIAM SHAICBSPBARS: 

with whom he had much in common^ 
with whose erring youth and misruly 
mates he had large sympathy from simi^ 
larity of experience, and for whose sub^ 
sequent reformation and heroic career he 
had warm and enthusiastic admiration* 
The Prince was an EiigHshman, his 
countryman, a man who had shed luster 
on the name and history of his country ; 
a man who lived at a time not so very 
remote from his own but that he could 
readily transport himself into it ; and he 
saw in his career and character his own 
reflected as in a glass, his youth recalled 
as by a wonderful coincidence ; and he de- 
termined to display it on the stage. Like 
the Prince, he had in his youth been led 
into wild and irregular courses ; yet ** his 
behavior had not been offensive, nor 
tending to the damage of anybody," and 
doubtless he took care *' to avoid doing 
of wrong, and to tender his affections 
within the tract of virtue, whereby he 
would open unto himself a ready passage 
of good liking among the prudent sort, 
and be beloved of such as could discern 



PORTRA VED B V mMSElR 



13 



his disposition." He therefore naturally 
felt drawn toward a man who had under- 
gone the same ordeal as he had, incurred 
the same obloquy, experienced the same 
''durance vile" for defiance of authority, 
and finally emerged unscathed into a 
nobler and higher sphere of life, shedding 
luster on his country and glorifying the 
English name. Undoubtedly it was of 
himself and his own youth that he 
thought when he caused the Prince's 
father to say : 

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds, 
And he, the noble image of my youth, 
Is overspread with them. 

Shakespeare, therefore, was conscious 
of the fact, that he needed but to draw 
upon his own life and experience to give 
a perfect picture of the man whom he re- 
sembled ; and it was consequently a labor 
of love for him 

to tell the world, 
England did never owe so sweet a hope, 
So much misconstrued in his wantonness. 

For the Poet was, you may be sure, even 



14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in youth, a prince among his fellows, the 
first and foremost among the associates 
of his youth as among those of his man- 
hood. Let the reader, familiar with 
Shakespeare, call to mind his impression 
of the character of Prince Henry, as de- 
lineated in the First and the Second Part 
of Henry IV. ; let him think of him as he 
showed himself in his wit-combats with 
Falstaff ; in his thoughtful yet sarcastic 
encounters with Poins ; in his kindly 
demeanor toward Mrs. Quickly and her 
"loggerheads " ; in his good-natured and 
fun-loving pranks with the tapster Fran- 
cis ; in his ready appreciation and kindly 
recognition of Falstaff s witty page ; in 
his noble behavior toward his father and 
his brothers, and in his generous conduct 
over the defeated and dying Hotspur ; — 
let him remember the vein of philosophy 
and deep thinking that runs through all 
his talk, notwithstanding its looseness, 
and his eloquent and poetic utterances in 
his interviews with his father ; let him 
call to mind his familiarity with the com- 
mon people, with Tom, Dick and Francis, 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



15 



and his ability to ''drink with any tinker 
in his own language during his life " ; his 
love of punning and witticisms, his quips, 
cranks, and quiddities ; — let him recall 
all these things, and he cannot fail 
to perceive that this character is such 
as he and all the world have ever asso- 
ciated with that of the gentle, wise and 
large-hearted poet Shakespeare. Let 
him follow me a little farther, and I shall 
lay before him matter which, without the 
aid of riddles, ciphers, or mysteries of 
any kind, must convince him, almost 
beyond doubt, that the Prince and the 
Poet are one and the same person. 



/ 

j5 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED AND FORTI- 
FIED — HOW GENIUS GETS AN EDUCA- 
TION. 

BEFORE taking up the Prince in the 
order in which he appears, and going 
right on with him to the end, let me first 
complete the impression made by the ex- 
tract I gave from the opening scene in 
Henry F"., and thus show how this in- 
teresting Prince, full of knowledge and 
power, came by his education : 

Arch. The king is full of grace and fair regard. 

Bish. And a true lover of the holy Church. 

Arch. The courses of his youth promised it not. 
The breath no sooner left his father's body, 
But that his wildness, mortified in him, 
Seemed to die too : yea, at that very moment, 
Consideration like an angel came, 
And whipped the offending Adam out of him, 
Leaving his body as a paradise, 
To envelop and contain celestial spirits. 
Never was such a sudden scholar made ; 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



17 



Never came reformation in a flood, 

With such a heady current, scouring faults ; 

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness 

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once. 

As in this king. 

Bish. We are blessed in the change. 

Arch. Hear him but reason in divinity, 
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish 
You would desire the king were made a prelate : 
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs. 
You would say it hath been all-in-all his study : 
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 
A fearful battle rendered you in music ; 
Turn him to any cause of policy, 
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 
Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks, 
The air, a chartered libertine, is still, 
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, 
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences ; 
So that the art and practic part of life 
Must be the mistress to his theoric : 
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it. 
Since his addiction was to courses vain ; 
His companions unlettered, rude, and shallow ; 
His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports ; 
And never noted in him any study, 
Any retirement, any sequestration 
From open haunts and popularity. 

This is precisely the language of those 
who now say Shakespeare could not have 



Ig WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

been the author of the works attributed 
to him, and seems by a kind of prophecy 
to have been made to answer them. 
Now mark how the Bishop is made to 
explain how such a man may come by 
his knowledge : 

JBish. The strawberry grows underneath the 
nettle, 
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
Neighbored by fruit of baser quality : 
And so the prince obscured his contemplation 
Under the veil of wildness ; which, no doubt, 
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, 
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. 

Arch, It must be so ; for miracles are ceased. 
And therefore we must needs admit the means 
How things are perfected. 

How significant, how autobiographical 
these lines seem, in the light of what we 
know of Shakespeare I Is it not plain 
that a man may study, grow, ripen, and 
become wise and capable without all the 
world knowing the process? Is it not 
evident that his power and knowledge 
may grow. 

Like the summer grass, fastest by night, 
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty ? 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. ig 

Shakespeare undoubtedly studied when 
most people thought he was asleep. 
His early years in Stratford — where he 
is supposed to have written Vemcs and 
Adonis — were, we may be sure, by no 
means studyless years ; for a man of 
genius will study ; it is the breath of his 
nostrils; no man of genius was ever 
known not to study. Study, or as the 
Archbishop puts it, contemplation is the 
very life, the very food of his soul ; and 
he cannot exist without it. So that he 
probably owed much more to midnight 
oil than anybody ever suspected. Mira- 
cles have indeed ceased, and therefore we 
must admit that men attain perfection by 
other means than by the direct Interposi- 
tion of Providence. How many minds 
there are that, by self-exertion alone, 
have equalled those most carefully trained 
by pedagogues and professors! These 
are they that, ''cresclve in their faculty, 
grow like the summer grass, fastest by 
night," in quiet and silent meditation ; 
-these are they that have made, not merely 
books, but the world the subject of their 



20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

studies; not merely science, but men and 
women, institutions, governments, and 
passing events ; and the result is a large 
and liberal intellectual culture, without 
pedantry or self-conceit, and with facul- 
ties working free of all narrow rules and 
regulations. 

The chief argument of the believers in 
the Baconian theory is, that while Shake- 
speare was a man of little or no literary 
culture, and had passed his youth in com- 
mon labor. 

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow ; 
His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports ; 
And never noted in him any study, 
Any retirement, any sequestration 
From open haunts and popularity, 

Bacon was from his earliest years the 
child of culture, the recipient of the best 
training of his day, the companion of 
princes, statesmen, scholars, and refined 
people, and a thinker and student all his 
life ; and that none but a man of this 
stamp could have composed the plays 
which go under Shakespeare's name. 
Lord Bacon was all they claim him to be, 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 21 

a man of wonderful powers and vast 
learning; but those who advance this 
argument against Shakespeare know 
nothing of the nature and working of 
genius. Such people seem to be una- 
ware of the fact, that some of the finest 
minds the world ever saw grew to ma- 
turity and worked most of their won- 
ders without having received any special 
training, without being endowed with 
any extraordinary culture, and with- 
out having had the advantage of any 
society beyond the commonest ; and that 
some of the finest productions, in art and 
literature, that the world possesses, are 
the work of men who spent their lives 
amid rude and unlettered companions. 
Bunyan, who wrote the finest allegory 
produced in 2000 years, and whose style 
as a writer is unsurpassed for force, 
beauty, and simplicity, was a common 
tinker, whose associates were tinkers, 
tapsters, bell-ringers, soldiers, and puri- 
tanical ranters, and who had learned little 
more than to read the English Bible; 
Burns, the first and finest poet of Scot- 



'22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

land, whose works are read and admired 
by the whole civilized world, was a com- 
mon laboring peasant, up to his knees in 
dirt and manure till his twenty-^eighth year, 
with hardly any schooling to speak of, land 
with none but cattle, carters, and country 
bumpkins for companions ; Lincoln, the 
first and foremost of American statesmen, 
whose speeches in the campaign against 
Douglas and whose address at Gettys- 
burg will stand comparison with the best 
utterances of our most polished orators, 
was born in a log-cabin in the wild 
West and bred as a common rail-splitter 
and boatman. What education these 
men had, they got, like every man of 
real power, by self-exertion, by their own 
quiet, unaided efforts. No man, not even 
the college-graduate, acquires through 
the teaching of others the power which 
makes him what he is ; no man ever ac- 
quires any real mental power except by 
his own efforts ; and no man ever at- 
tained distinction in art or literature 
except by what he taught himself. It is 
only when the scholar has broken away 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSRLR 23 

from his teachers and begun to teach 
himself that he commences to gain power ; 
it is only when his mind begins to work 
of its own accord that it commences to 
expand into independent activity. Not 
scholastic nor literary lore ; not intellect- 
ual training nor foreign travel ; not the 
companionship of princes nor of refined 1 
and cultured people ; none of these things 
supplies the Promethean spark which en- 
ables the poet to work his wonders ; — 
it is something finer, nobler, rarer than ■ 
any or all of these things ; it is that 
divine essence which we call genius, that 
intellectual li^fht which comes from God 
through nature, which shines steadily or ' 
fitfully in the peasant as in the prince, , 
and which all other things may aid, but * 
which none can create. 

Let me give one or two more exam- 
ples. Here is our most famous and per- 
haps most highly admired American ora- 
tor, Patrick Henry, who spent nearly all 
his time, till his fortieth year, in fishing 
and hunting in the rivers and woods of 
Virginia, becoming familiar with nature 



H 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



and man in their wildest state, and car- 
ing almost as little for books as the abo- 
rigines with whom he associated. He 
was literally a denizen of the woods most 
of his life, and never took a book in hand 
except when compelled to do so. It was 
in this free and independent way of liv- 
ing that he acquired that passionate love 
of liberty for which he was afterwards 
distinguished, and which he so eloquently 
expressed in his famous speech against 
George III. He had been at one time 
a store-keeper, at another, according to 
Jefferson, a bar-keeper, at another a stu- 
dent at law ; and when he presented him- 
self before the examiners to secure his 
license to practice, he was found to be so 
deficient in legal knowledge that it was 
only by special favor that he obtained 
his license ; and yet, when the Revolu- 
tionary war broke out, and duty sum- 
moned him to action, he suddenly burst 
upon the world as an orator of the first 
rank, a man of remarkable power, whose 
speeches annihilated all opposition and 
determined the fate of the nation in a 



POR TRA YED H Y HIMSELR 2 J 

great crisis ; a man who stood head and 
shoulders above all the learned and col- 
lege-bred men by whom he was sur- 
rounded. 

Here is Charles James Fox, one of the 
ablest of English statesmen and most elo- 
quent of English orators, of whom Sir 
Philip Francis, who knew him well, made 
this remarkable statement: " They know 
nothing of Mr. Fox who think that he 
was what is commonly called well edu- 
cated, I know that he was directly or 
very nearly the reverse. His mind edu- 
cated itself; not by early study or in- 
struction, but by active listening and 
rapid apprehension. He said so himself 
in the House of Commons when he and 
Mr. Burke parted — [that he had learned 
more from the conversation of Mr. Burke 
than from all the books he had ever read]. 
His powerful understanding grew like a 
forest oak, not by cultivation, but by neg- 
lect." 

^* Grew by neglect ! " what an expres- 
sion ! It seems to hit the mark exactly, 
not only with regard to the great orator, 



26 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

but with regard to the great dramatist, 
For if the mind of the EngHsh statesman 
and orator could grow by neglect, why 
not that of his great countryman, the all- 
observing and all-absorbing Shakespeare? 
Who does not know that there are cer- 
tain plants which flourish best when free 
from all restraint ? and who has not heard 
of men and women who declared they 
prospered best when entirely free from 
the restraints and restrictions of the ped- 
agogue and the ferule ? ''His powerful 
understanding grew like a forfest oak, not 
by cultivation, but by neglect." I thank 
thee, Sir Philip, for that word ; it is an 
inspiration of genius, revealing the true 
nature of genius: it is Junius describ- 
ing Fox. Probably no words could bet- 
ter characterize Shakespeare's education, 
which, poor as it may seem to the Baco- 
nians, was far better for him than hav- 
ing his head stuffed with Greek parti- 
cles and Latin roots. Classical training 
might have spoiled him, as it has spoiled 
many a man before and since : it might 
have squeezed nature out of him, and 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 27 

moulded him into one of those stiff, for- 
mal, pedantic writers of classical poetry 
that were so common in his day and are 
not unknown in ours. As it was, he 
painted English men and manners in 
English words and in English ways ; he 
represented his countrymen in the lan- 
guage and in the manner of his country- 
men ; he spoke like the common people 
and thought like the most cultured, and 
had he received a Greek and Latin train- 
ing, he might have given all his thoughts 
a breek and Latin tinge, and written no 
better than the rest of the learned dra- 
matic tribe. 

Here is the French Shakespeare, 
Moliere, the man who, of all French 
writers, has most truly observed and 
painted human nature— this man was 
brought up to his father's trade, that of 
a frtpier, or mender of old clothes. Like 
Burns's mother, he could 

" Gar auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ; " 
and doubtless his early training served 
him in good stead in his later occupa- 
tion as playwright and stage-manager. 



28 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

It was not until one eventful night in 
his fifteenth year, when a kinsman brought 
him to see a comedy acted at the Hotel 
de Bourgogne, that he conceived a de- 
sire for "something better than he had 
known," something fitter for him than 
mending and refashioning old clothes ; 
and a burning thirst for knowledge took 
possession of him. He longed for an 
opportunity to cultivate his mind, to 
" unroll the ample page of knowledge, 
rich with the spoils of time " ; and he 
succeeded, much against the will of his 
father, in gaining admission to a Jesuit 
college. But it is well known that a man 
who is thus suddenly awakened to the 
importance and beauty of knowledge, 
and starving for the want of it, will get 
an education in spite of poverty or riches, 
danger or difficulty, in spite of the arbi- 
trary rules of pedants, or the dull formal- 
ism of professors ; and nobody imagines 
that Moliere became what he was through 
the training of schoolmasters. 'Tis true, 
O worshipper of Greek-and-Latin cul- 
ture ! this man Moliere, the greatest of 



TORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



29 



all French writers, did learn to clean, 
mend, and alter old clothes, as a means 
of earning his bread ! Although Shake- 
speare was the son of a wool-comber, and 
is said to have worked at his father's 
trade, he suffered no humiliation there- 
by, any more than Moliere, nor rendered 
himself less capable of intellectual exer- 
tion. A certain amount of manual labor 
is, in fact, favorable to intellectual exer- 
tion. What an honor and what an en- 
couragement to the hardy sons of Toil, 
to think that the two greatest dramatic 
poets of the two greatest European na- 
tions should belong to their guild ! 

The great power of genius, the great 
achievements of genius, come, not from 
the study of books, but from personal 
observation and silent reflection. There 
are many men of eminence who have 
openly declared, that their college train- 
ing was worse than useless ; that it was 
nothing but a hindrance to their mental 
development (for there are very few real 
teachers in the world) ; that they had to 
unlearn most of what they had learned at 



30 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



college ; and that their real training began 
only after leaving college. It was inter- 
course with the world that did lor them 
what their teachers were unable to do : 
it was personal experience among men 
that awoke in them a thirst for knowledge 
and a determination to study for them- 
selves. " I learned nothing at college," 
says Voltaire, " but Latin and nonsense." 
" I am sorry that I ever was sent to col- 
lege," says Ralph Bernal Osborne, the bril- 
liant parliamentary orator, " for I learned 
nothing there but vices and bad habits." 
" It is good to go through college," says 
Emerson, ''to see how little there is in 
it;" and Hazlitt boldly maintains that 
" any man who has passed through the 
regular gradations of a classical educa- 
tion, and is not made a fool by it, may 
consider himself as having had a narrow 
escape." 

The study of the classics is by no 
means always the best thing for a youth 
of genius. Where a dozen young men 
come together to discuss questions of 
the hour, to talk, to compare views, to 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



31 



examine systems, or to criticise and 
laugh at men and things, — that is some- 
times the best college for such a youth. 
Such was Burns's college at Dunferm- 
line ; such was Curran's college at the 
London debating club ; and such has 
been the college of many another, who 
attained distinction without ever setting 
foot within college walls. It makes no 
matter how a man gets an education, 
provided he gets it ; and some get it 
out of school much better than in it. 
Half the men who lead public opinion 
in the United States to-day, as editors 
and writers, are graduates of a printing- 
office. "In youth," says Walter Bage- 
hot, " the real plastic energy is not in 
tutors, or lectures, or in books *got 
up'; but in Homer and Plutarch; in 
the books that all read because all like ; 
in what all talk of because all are in- 
terested ; or in the argumentative walk 
and disputatious lounge ; in the impact 
of young thought upon young thought, 
of fresh thought on fresh thought ; of 



3^ 



Vf^ILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



hot thought on hot thought ; In mirth 
and refutation, In ridicule and laughter ; 
for these are the free play of the natural 
mind ; " and these form the most mlnd- 
quickenlng and thought-stirring exercises 
that the student can engage In. That is 
why the teacher who Instructs without 
book, who employs his own language 
instead of that of the book. Is so much 
more successful than the regular word- 
cramming pedagogue. 

In Shakespeare's time, the world was 
alive with discussion ; the human mind, 
after a sleep of nearly a thousand years, 
had awakened to a love of knowledge, 
and had beo^un in earnest to discuss 
philosophy, religion, politics, and natural 
science. Printing, the Reformation, and 
the discoveries in America and India had 
set men a-thlnkincr and whetted their 
appetite for knowledge ; and w^herever 
two or three were gathered together, 
there was a school of thought ; there 
was a college and a training-school for 
genius. This was the living school In 



POkTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



33 



which Shakespeare was educated ; this 
was the school in which his mind ex- 
panded into a recognition of its own 
powers, and in which he began making 
those observations which he subsequent- 
ly turned to so good account. Probably 
he, too, like Fox, learned more from 
conversation than he did from books. 
Of one thing we may be sure, that of 
nothing was he more fond than of talk- 
ing with men and women who could thus 
communicate their thoughts, pleasantly 
or forcibly, one to another. 

I have heard Edward Everett Hale 
say that the best men of Elizabeth's time 
were taught " to read, write, speak the 
truth, and hate the Spaniard," and that 
was all ! Yet what mighty men there 
were in those days ! They were indeed 
giants, giants greater than any in an- 
cient fable or modern romance ; and 
their power came not so much from the 
study of books, as from actual observa- 
tion of men and things, from practical 
thinking and talking on the questions 



34 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



of the day. Like the Duke in As You 
Like Ity they could 

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF, 



35 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRINCE AND THE POET COMPARED. 

LET US now go back, and take up the 
Prince, from the moment in which 
he is first mentioned by Shakespeare, 
and go forward with him until that in 
which he quits the scene of action. We 
shall find that his character is uniformly 
that of the Poet ; that it uniformly agrees 
with all that we know of the Poet ; and 
that in this play there is a revelation of 
him beyond that which will be found in 
any other of his plays. I have said that 
Shakespeare makes him a chief charac- 
ter in three plays ; he forms, in fact, 
one of the characters in four ; although 
in one, that in which he is first men- 
tioned, he does not come on the stage. 
\Vi Richard III. y Act V., Scene III., the 
following passage occurs : 



36 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Windsor : A Room in the Court Castle. 

Enter Bolingbroke as King; Percy, and other 

Lords. 

Bol. Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son ? 
'Tis full three months since I did see him last : 
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he. 
I would to God, my lords, he might be found. 
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there, 
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent, 
With unrestrained loose companions ; 
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes, 
And beat our watch, and rob our passengers ; 
While he, young wanton, and effeminate boy, 
Takes on the point of honor to support 
So dissolute a crew. 

Per. My lord, some two days since I saw the 
prince, 
And told him of these triumphs held at Oxford. 

Bol. And what said the gallant ? 

Per. His answer was,— he would unto the stews, 
And from the commonest creature pluck a glove, 
And wear it as a favor ; and with that 
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger. 

Bol. As dissolute as desperate : yet, through 
both 
I see some sparks of better hope, which elder days 
May happily bring forth. 

This skilfully prepares the reader for 
what is coming. Now observe this full- 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 37 

length portrait of the Prince, as he first 
appears in the opening scenes of the 
First Part of Henry IV, : 

Scene II. London. A Room in the Palace. 
Enter Prince Henry and Falstaff. 

Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad ? 

Prince. Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of 
old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and 
sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast 
forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst 
truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the 
time of the day ? unless hours were cups of sack, 
and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of 
bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and 
the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame- 
colored taffata. I see no reason why thou shouldst 
be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. 

Fal. Indeed, you come near me now, Hal ; for 
we that take purses go by the moon and the seven 
stars, and not by Phcebus,— he, " that wander- 
ing knight so fair." And I pr'ythee, sweet wag, 
when thou art king,— as, God save thy grace,— 
majesty, I should say, for grace thou wilt have 

none,— 

Prince. What ! none ? 

Fal. No, by my troth ; not so much as wilt serve 
to be prologue to an egg and butter. 

Prince, Well, how then? Come, roundly, 
roundly. 



38 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



FaL Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art 
king, let not us, that are squires of the night's 
body, be called thieves of the day's beauty : let us 
be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, min- 
ions of the moon ; and let men say, we be men of 
good government, being governed as the sea is, by 
our noble and chaste mistress, the moon, under 
whose countenance we — steal ! 

Prince. Thou say'st well, and it holds well, too ; 
for the fortune of us that are the moon's men doth 
ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the 
sea is, by the moon. As for proof now : A purse of 
gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, 
and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning ; 
got with swearing — Lay by ; and spent with crying 
— ^Bring in ; now in as low an ebb as the foot of 
the ladder, and by and by in as high a flow as the 
ridge of the gallows. 

Fal. By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad. And 
is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench ? 

Prince. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of 
the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet 
robe of durance ? 

FaL How now, how now, mad wag ? what, in 
thy quips and thy quiddities ? what a plague have 
I to do with a buff jerkin ? 

Prince. Why, what a pox have I to do with my 
hostess of the tavern ? 

Fal. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning, 
many a time and oft. 

Prince. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part ? 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 39 

Fal. No : I'll give thee thy due ; thou hast paid 

all there. 

Prince. Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin 
would stretch ; and where it would not, I have used 
my credit. 

Fal. Yea, and so used it, that were it not here 
apparent that thou art heir apparent,— But, I 
pr'ythee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing 
in England when thou art king? and resolution 
thus fobbed, as it is, with the rusty curb of old father 
antic the law ? Do not thou, when thou art king, 
hang a thief. 

Prince. No : thou shalt. 

Fal. Shall I ? O rare ! By the Lord, I'll be a 
brave judge. 

Prince. Thou judgest false already. I mean, 
thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so 
become a rare hangman. 

Fal Well, Hal, well ; and in some sort it 
jumps with my humor, as well as waiting in the 
court, I can tell you. 

Prince. For obtaining of suits ? 

Fal. Yea, for obtaining of suits,— whereof the 
hangman hath no lean wardrobe. 'Sblood, I am 
as melancholy as a gib-cat, or a lugged bear. 

Prince. Or an old lion ; or a lover's lute. 

Fal. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bag- 
pipe. 

Prince. What say'st thou to a hare, or the mel- 
ancholy of Moor-ditch ? 

Fal Thou hast the most unsavory similes; 



40 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



and art, indeed, the most comparative, rascalliest, 
sweet young prince. — But, Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble 
me no more with vanity. I would to God, thou and 
I knew where a commodity of good names were to 
be bought. An old lord of the Council rated me 
the other day in the street about you, sir ; but I 
marked him not : and yet he talked very wisely ; 
but I regarded him not : and yet he talked wisely, 
and in the street too. 

Prince. Thou didst well ; for wisdom cries out in 
the streets, and no man regards it. 

Fal. O! thou hast damnable iteration, and art, 
indeed, able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done 
much harm upon me, Hal. God forgive thee for 
it ! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing ; 
and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little 
better than one of the wicked. I must give over 
this life, and I will give it over ; by the Lord, an I 
do not, I am a villain. I'll be damned for never a 
king's son in Christendom. 

Prince. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, 
Jack.? 

Fal. Zounds ! where thou wilt, lad ; I'll make 
one ; an I do not, call me villain, and baffle me. 

Prince. I see a good amendment of life in thee : 
from praying to purse-taking. 

Enter Poins, at a distance. 

Fal. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal [/. e. a 
plunder'Seeking soldier] : 'Tis no sin for a man to 
labor in his vocation. Poins ! — Now shall we know 
if Gadshill have set a match. O ! if men were to 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



41 



be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot 
enough for him ! This is the most omnipotent 
villain that ever cried, Stand ! to a true man. 

P7'ince, Good morrow, Ned. 

Poins. Good morrow, sweet Hal. — What says 
Monsieur Remorse ? What says Sir John Sack-and- 
Sugar ? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about 
thy soul, that thou soldest him, on Good- Friday 
last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg? 

Prince. Sir John stands to his word ; the devil 
shall have his bargain ; for he was never yet a 
breaker of proverbs : he will give the devil his due. 

Poins. Then art thou damned for keeping thy 
word with the devil. 

Prince. Else he had been damned for cozening 
the devil. 

Poins. But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning 
by four o'clock, early at Gadshill. There are pil- 
grims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and 
traders riding to London with fat purses. I have 
visors for you all ; you have horses for yourselves. 
Gadshill lies to-night in Rochester ; I have be- 
spoke supper to-morrow night in Eastcheap : we 
may do it as secure as sleep. If you will go, I will 
stuff your purses full of crowns ; if you will not, 
tarry at home and be hanged. 

Fal. Hear ye, Yedward : if I tarry at home, and 
go not, I'll hang you for going. 

Poins, You will, chops "i 

FaL Hal, wilt thou make one ? 



42 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Prince, Who, I rob ? I a thief? Not I, by my 
faith. 

FaL There's neither honesty, manhood, nor 
good fellowship in thee, nor thou cam'st not of the 
blood royal, if thou dar'st not stand for ten shillings 
[the royal or real was a coin worth ten shillings]. 

Prince. Well, then, once in my life I'll be a mad- 
cap. 

Fal. Why, that's well said. 

Prince. Well, come what will, I'll tarry at home. 

Fal. By the Lord, I'll be a traitor, then, when 
thou art king. 

Prince. I care not. 

Poins. Sir John, I pr'ythee, leave the prince and 
me alone : I will lay him down such reasons for this 
adventure, that he shall go. 

Fal. Well, God give thee the spirit of persua- 
sion, and him the ears of profiting, that what thou 
speakest may move, and what he hears may be be- 
lieved, that the true prince may (for recreation's 
sake) prove a false thief ; for the poor abuses of 
the time want countenance. Farewell : You shall 
find me in Eastcheap. 

Prince. Farewell, thou latter spring ! Farewell, 
All-hallown summer ! [Exit Falstaff. 

Poins. Now, my good, sweet, honey lord, ride 
with us to-morrow. I have a jest to execute that 
I cannot manage alone. Falstaff,, Bardolph, Peto 
and Gadshill, shall rob those men that we have 
already waylaid : yourself and I will not be there ; 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSEW, 



43 



and when they have the booty, if you and I do not 
rob them, cut this head from my shoulders. 

Prince. How shall we part with them in setting 
forth ? 

Poins. Why, we will set forth before or after 
them, and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein 
it is at our pleasure to fail ; and then will they ad- 
venture upon the exploit themselves, which they 
shall have no sooner achieved, but we'll set upon 
them. 

Prince. Ay, but 'tis like that they will know us 
by our horses, by our habits, and by every other 
appointment, to be ourselves. 

Poins. Tut ! our horses they shall not see ; I'll 
tie them in the wood : our visors we will change, 
after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of 
buckram for the nonce, to inmask our noted out- 
ward garments. 

Prince. Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard 
for us. 

Poins. Well, for two of them, I know them to be 
as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for 
the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll 
forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be the 
incomparable lies that this same fat rogue will tell 
us when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least, 
he fought with ; what wards, what blows, what ex- 
tremities he endured ; and, in the reproof of this, 
lies the jest. 

Prince. W^ell, I'll go with thee. Provide us all 



44 



William Shakespeare 



things necessar}^ and meet me to-morrow night in 
Eastcheap ; there I'll sup. Farewell. 

Poins. Farewell, my lord. \Exit Poins. 

Prince: I know you all, and will a while uphold 
The unyoked humor of your idleness : 
Yet herein will I imitate the sun. 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapors, that did seem to strangle him. 
If all the year were playing holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work ; 
But, when they seldom come, they wished-for come, 
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 
So, when this loose behavior I throw off, 
And pay the debt I never promised. 
By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes ; 
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground. 
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault. 
Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes, 
Than that which hath no foil to set it off. 
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill, 
Redeeming time when men think least I will. 

Talk about the wit-combats between 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson ! Talk 
about the loss to literature from want of a 



POR TkA YED B V HIMSELP. 45 

Boswell to report them ! Why, here they 
are, reported by Shakespeare himself ! 
What finer specimens of such combats 
could be had than these ? These are 
Shakespeare's wit-combats with the wit- 
tiest man he knew ; these are specimens 
of his talks with his fellows ; these are 
the scenes which he drew from his own 
life and experience. Who does not feel 
that these are the words ''so nimble and 
so full of subtle flame," which, after their 
author's departure from the Mermai.d 
Tavern, '* left an air behind them which 
alone was able to make the next two 
companies right witty?" Shakespeare, 
who " never blotted a line," wrote as 
easily as he talked, and talked as wittily 
and wisely as he wrote. He was, like 
the Prince, a lover of good things of all 
kinds ; of good books, good conversation, 
good wine, good company. That the 
Prince was well acquainted with general 
literature, is evident ; that he was famil- 
iar with the Bible is equally so, and that, 
notwithstanding the levity of many of his 
speeches, he thought deeply on life and 



46 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

death, and observed carefully the charac- 
ters of men, is perfectly clear. He was, 
in fact, notwithstanding his wildness, one 
of the most accomplished princes of his 
time, and we shall see that the Poet 
makes him resemble his creator in this 
respect. 

I beg the reader to notice carefully 
this last speech of the Prince, for it throws 
a flood of light on his character, and, to 
my mind, connects it unmistakably with 
that of the Poet. Let him observe the 
wise reflection, the cool, philosophic con- 
templation, behind " the veil of wildness," 
which it displays. Let him notice that it 
shows plainly he is not one of them, but 
an observer, a player among them, whose 
objects are far different from theirs. For 
what does this line mean, 

I'll so offend, to make offence a skill, 

but this : '* My whole desperate conduct 
is nothing more than a piece of skilful 
acting, to make my real character shine 
all the brighter by-and-by ? " And who 
does not know that there have been oth- 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. ^y 

ers, quite as philosophic, quite as gifted 
as he, who also sought ''rare accidents" 
to relieve the tedium of the time ? Who, 
that is acquainted with the life of Lord 
Byron, for instance, does not know that 
he played a part and made himself " a 
motley to the view," from sheer eccen- 
tricity of genius ? 

But still more significant is this line : 

Redeeming time when men think least I will. 

What a world of meanincr there is in 
that line ! Is not this another evidence 
that he studied when nobody knew of 
it? This is the key, the secret of his 
success ; the explanation of his wonder- 
ful knowledge, his vast acquaintance with 
history, literature, science and art. Who 
has not seen the same thing exemplified 
in the lives of other eminent and success- 
ful men ? This is how most men of 
eminence gain their knowledge ; this Is 
how genius works ; how it acquires an 
education and accomplishes its wonders. 
The Poet was silently working and lay- 
ing in stores of knowledo^e and wisdom 



48 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



when the rest of mankind were snoring; 
laying in stores of knowledge at a time 
when men thought least he would. This, 
therefore, is plainly a leaf from his own 
experience. " It is certain," says that 
admirable Shakespearean scholar, Mr. 
Hudson, '* that in mental and literary 
accomplishment the Prince was far in ad- 
vance of the age, being in fact as well 
one of the most finished gentlemen as of 
the greatest statesmen and best men of 
his time. It was for the old chroniclers 
to talk of his miraculous conversion. 
Shakespeare, in a far wiser spirit, brings 
his conduct within the ordinary rules and 
measures of human character, represent- 
ing whatsoever changes occur in him as 
proceeding by the methods and propor- 
tions of nature." Precisely ; his own 
nature and experience. He had been 
such a man ; he had done such things ; 
and he had doubtless acted with similar 
motives. 

Notice how conscious the Prince is, 
even while associating with evil-doers, 
and apparently furthering their wicked 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. ^g 

devices, of the consequences of evil 
deeds. No sooner has he described the 
ebb and flow of the purse of the thief, 
than he adds, **Now in as low an ebb as 
the foot of the ladder, and by-and-by in 
as high a flow as the ridge of the gal- 
lows!" And when Falstaff asks, imme- 
diately after, ** Is not my hostess of the 
tavern a most sweet wench ? " the Prince 
replies : " As the honey of Hybla, my old 
lad of the castle. And is not a buff 
jerkin \the coat of a sheriff's officer\ a 
most sweet robe of durance ? " That is : 
" Oh yes,, she is very amiable ; but is it 
not a sweet thing to go to prison, by run- 
ning In debt to this wench V 

Thus we see that, In the Prince's 
mind, the consequences of evil-doing are 
always present, and he toys with evil and 
evil-doers without actually becoming one 
of them. Toys, did I say ? Nay, not. 
so ; he thus plainly Intimates to Falstaff 
that evil-doing leads to the most dire and 
disgraceful consequences ; which agrees 
perfectly with the conduct of the Poet 
himself ; for we find that he avoided the 
4 



so 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



disgraceful deeds and wretched dissipa- 
tion of most of the other dramatists of 
his time. Let any one who knows some- 
thing of the lives of Marlowe, Greene, 
Peele, and the rest, as well as of the life 
of the Poet, compare their wild and reck- 
less careers with that of the wise, pru- 
dent and gentle Shakespeare — his thrift 
in his profession, his care to live on an 
independent footing, his noble friends 
and associates, his kindness to Ben Jon- 
son, his generosity toward his father — 
and then say if he did not, like the 
Prince, and unlike them, have a horror of 
the "buff jerkin" and the "most sweet 
robe of durance ! " 



'i. ■*, 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



51 



CHAPTER V. 

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE POET IN THE 
PRINCE. 

THE Prince next appears in the 
Gadshill robbery scene, and after 
Falstaff and the rest attack and despoil 
the travellers, he and Poins attack and 
despoil the thieves, and in high good 
humor speed away for London. 

Prince, Got with much ease. Now merrily to 
horse : 

The thieves are scattered, and possessed with fear 

So strongly, that they dare not meet each other; 

Each takes his fellow for an officer. 

Away, good Ned ! Falstaff sweats to death. 

And lards the lean earth as he walks along : 

Wer't not for laughing, I should pity him. 

Poins. How the rogue roared ! 

Now comes a scene which is more char- 
acteristic of Shakespeare than almost 
anything in the play. It is the scene 
between the Prince and Francis the pot- 



52 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



boy, just before the re-entrance of Falstaff 
with his hacked sword and blood-stained 
garments. One word before presenting 
this scene. The patience and gentle in- 
dulgence which Shakespeare showed to 
the common people of his acquaintance 
is proved by the fact that he was loved 
by all who knew him. He listened with 
patience and interest to the talk of the 
poorest parrot of a man, and took care 
not to hurt him. "He was too wise not 
to know," says Walter Bagehot, "■ that 
for most of the purposes of human life, 
stupidity is a most valuable element. 
He had nothing of the impatience which 
sharp, logical, narrow minds habitually 
feel when they come across those who 
do not apprehend their quick and pre- 
cise deductions. No doubt he talked 
to the stupid players, to the stupid door- 
keeper, to the property man, who con- 
siders paste jewels ' very preferable, be- 
sides the expense,'— talked with the stu- 
pid apprentices of stupid Fleet Street, 
and had much pleasure in ascertaining 
what was their notion of King Lear'' 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 5 3 

Now, bearing this in mind, and recollect- 
ing his delightful and loving delineation 
of that prince of blockheads, Dogberry, 
let the reader peruse carefully the fol- 
lowing scene, and say if the Prince is not 
Shakespeare himself. Let him espe- 
cially observe his statement at the open- 
ing, that he had been ''with three or four 
loggerheads, had sounded the very base 
string of humility, and could call them all 
by their Christian names." Let him rec- 
ollect that the Boar s-Head Tavern was 
very near the Blackfriar's Play-house, and 
that it was in fact a known resort of 
Shakespeare and his companions. 

Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar's-Head Tavern. 
Enter Prince Henry and Poins. 

Prince. Ned, pr'ythee, come out of that fat room 
and lend me thy hand to laugh a little. 

Poins. Where hast been, Hal ? 

Prince. With three or four loggerheads, amongst 
three or four-score hogsheads. I have sounded the 
very base string of humility.* Sirrah, I am sworn 
brother to a leash of drawers, and can call them all 
by their Christian names, as— Tom, Dick and Fran- 
cis. They take it already upon their salvation, that 
though I be but prince of Wales, yet I am the king 



54 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



of courtesy, and tell me flatly I am no proud Jack, 
like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a 
§;ood boy (by the Lord so they call me) ; and when 
I am king of England, I shall command all the good 
lads of Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, dying 
scarlet ; and when you breathe in your water- 
ing, they cry hem ! and bid you play it off. — To 
conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quar- 
ter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in 
his own language during my life. I tell thee, Ned, 
thou hast lost much honor that thou wert not with 
me in this action. But, sweet Ned, — to sweeten 
which name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of 
sugar, clapped even now in my hand by an under- 
skinker \tapstei-\ ; one that never spake other Eng- 
lish in his life than — " Eight shillings and sixpence," 
and — " You are welcome ; " with this shrill addition 
— " Anon, anon, sir ! Score a pint of bastard in the 
Half-moon," or so. But, Ned, to drive away the 
time till Falstaff come, I pr'ythee, do thou stand in 
some by-room, while I question my puny drawer to 
what end he gave me the sugar ; and do tho,u never 
leave calling — Francis ! that his tale to me may be 
nothing but — Anon ! Step aside, and I'll show thee 
a precedent. 

Foins, Francis ! 

Prince. Thou art perfect. 

Foins. Francis ! [Exit Poins. 

Enter Francis. 

Fran. Anon, anon, sir. Look down into the 
Pomegranate, Ralph. 



i'ORTRAVED BY H/MSELM 



55 



Prince. Come hither, Francis. 

Frmi. My lord. 

Prince. How long hast thou to serve, Francis ? 

Fran. Forsooth, five year, and as much as to — 

Poins. [ Within.] Francis ! 

Fran. Anon, anon, sir. 

Pri?ice. Five years ! by'r lady, a long lease for 
the clinking of pewter. But, Francis, darest thou 
be so valiant as to play the coward with thy inden- 
ture, and to show it a fair pair of heels, and run 
from it ? 

Fran. O Lord, sir ! I'll be sworn upon all the 
books in England, I could find in my heart — 

Poins. [ Within?\ Francis ! 

Fra?!. Anon, anon, sir. 

Pri?tce. How old art thou, Francis ? 

Fran. Let me see, — about Michaelmas next I 
shall be — 

Poins. [ Within?)^ Francis ! 

Fran. Anon, sir. — Pray you, stay a little, my 
lord. 

Prince. Nay, but hark you, Francis. For the 
sugar thou gavest me, — 'twas a pennyworth, was't 
not ? 

Fraji. O Lord, sir, I would it had been two. 

Prince. I will give thee for it a thousand pound: 
ask me when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it. 

Poins. [ Within?\ Francis ! 

Fran. Anon, anon. 

Prince. Ax\ox\, Francis.-* No, Francis; but to- 



c5 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

morrow, Francis ; or, Francis, on Tliursday ; or, in- 
deed, Francis, when thou wilt. But, Francis, — 

Fran. My lord ? 

Prince. Wilt thou rob this leathern- jerkin, 
crystal-button, nott-pated, agate-ring, puke-stock- 
ing, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch, — 

Fran. O Lord, sir ! who do you mean ? 

Prince. Why, then, your brown bastard is your 
only drink ; for, look you, your white canvas doub- 
let will sully. In Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so 
much. 

Fran. What, sir ? 

Poins. [ Within.'] Francis ! 

Prince. Away, you rogue ! Dost not thou hear 
them call ? 

[Here they both call him ; the drawer stands amazed, 
not knowiftg which way to go. 
Enter Vintner. 

Vint. What ! standest thou still, and hear'st such 
a calling ? Look to the guests within. \Exit Fran.] 
My lord, old Sir John, with half a dozen more, are at 
the door ; shall I let them in ? 

Prince. Let them alone awhile, and then open 
the door. \Exit Vintner.] Poins ! 
Re-enter Poins. 

Poins. Anon, anon, sir. 

Pri?tce. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the 
thieves are at the door ; shall we be merry ? 

Poins. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark 
ye : what cunning match have you made with this 
jest of ihe drawer ? Come, whal's the issue ? 



POR TRA YEt) B Y HIMSELK 5 Jr 

Prince. I am now of all humors, that have 
showed themselves humors, since the old days of 
goodman Adam, to the pupil age of this twelve 
o'clock at midnight. 

Re-enter Francis with wine. 
What's o'clock, Francis ? 

Fran. Anon, anon, sir. \Extt. 

Prince. That ever this fellow should have fewer 
words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman. 
His industry is — up-stairs, and down-stairs ; his elo- 
quence, the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of 
Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North ; he that 
kills me some six or seven dozen Scots at a break- 
fast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,—" Fie 
upon this quiet life! I want work." "O my 
sweet Harry," says she, " how many hast thou 
killed to-day ? " " Give my roan horse a drench," 
says he; and answers, " Some fourteen," an hour 
after ;" a trifle, a trifle." I pr'ythee, call in Fal- 
staff. I'll play Percy, and that damned brawn 
shall play Dame Mortimer, his wife. " Rivo ! " says 
the drunkard. Call in ribs, call in tallow. 

I should not be surprised if the Poet 
and one of his professional chums had, 
on some occasion, played this very trick 
on the drawer of the Blackfriar's or the 
Boar's-Head Tavern. Nothing is more 
likely. It looks, for all the world, like 
one of the practical jokes which he and 



58 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Burbage are said to have played togeth- 
er ; such as have often since been played 
by Brougham, by Sothern and by other 
dramatic celebrities of our time. 

This point of familiarity with the peo- 
ple, of kindly and appreciative associa- 
tion with the humblest sort of people, 
is a prime characteristic of Shakespeare. 
What a marvellous revelation of this trait 
is shown, in making the Prince become 
so familiar with a tapster as to allow him 
to present him with a lump of sugar ! Is 
not this Shakespeare ? Is not this the 
man who knew all classes of men so in- 
timately ? Mr. Walter Bagehot, in his 
excellent Essay on *' Shakespeare, the 
Man," has some very wise remarks on 
this head. After showing the striking 
resemblance between Shakespeare and 
Scott in their love of the common peo- 
ple, and the equally striking dissimilar- 
ity, in this respect, of Goethe to both of 
them, he says: '' If you will describe the 
people, nay, if you will write for the peo- 
ple, you must be one of the people. 
You must have led their life, and must 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



59 



wish to lead their life Any at- 
tempt to produce a likeness of what is 
not really liked by the person who is at- 
tempting it, will end in the creation of 
what may be correct, but is not living — 
of what may be artistic, but is likewise 
artificial." Was it not thus that Shake- 
speare succeeded in portraying men so 
well ? He liked the people, and could 
associate familiarly with the commonest 
amomr them. 

Consider for a moment the dramatic 
presentation of Egmont and Clarchen 
as compared with that of Brutus and 
Portia, or of Hotspur and Lady Percy. 
The popular hero, the successful gen- 
eral, the idol of a nation, high-spirited 
Egmont, is travestied by Goethe into 
something marvellously like himself, a 
heartless deceiver of young women ! 
With him the people were mere ciphers 
to work out literary or scientific prob- 
lems ; the means of ministering to the 
desires and the pleasures of the rich and 
gifted ; and while his countrymen were 
engaged In a death^strviggle for their 



6o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

very existence as a people, he could 
amuse himself by making chemical ex- 
periments on their bones in the grave- 
yards ! 

Scott, who was fond of associating fa- 
miliarly with the common people, and 
noting their ways and thoughts, was 
heartily loved by them ; and we know 
that Shakespeare was loved by all who 
knew him. One of Scott's striking re- 
marks is, that he ''had heard higher 
sentiments from his poor uneducated 
neighbors than he had ever met with 
outside of the pages of the Bible." He 
knew how to make the poor and humble 
feel at home with him, how to make them 
show their Inner selves ; and he knew 
how to reproduce their rude but signifi- 
cant ways of expressing their thoughts. 
He had always a smile, a kind word, and 
a pinch of snuff for every laboring man 
of his acquaintance whom he met, and 
chatted with him as pleasantly as If he 
were his friend. When he visited one of 
his titled friends, he was likely to be- 
come as familiar with the coachman of 



FOR TRA YED B V ///A J SELF. 6 1 

his host as with the host himself ; and 
there was not a dog in the household on 
whom he did not cast a smile of kindly 
interest. In his own country, he was so 
much loved by the people, that there was 
not a house on the Border in which he 
was not heartily welcome. " Sir Walter 
speaks to every man as if he were his 
blood relation," was the expressive re- 
mark of one of his dependants. 

Goethe, on the other hand, kept aloof 
from the people; he was not one of them, 
and never wanted to be ; he was essen- 
tially an aristocrat in feeling, and had 
little sympathy for the ways and habits 
of the common people; consequently, 
neither his language nor his thoughts are 
theirs ; in fact, he wrote in a language 
which the common people of his day no 
more understood than if it were Greek, 
and which is Greek to some' of the most 
intelligent among them to-day. He was, 
in truth, essentially Greek in his nature 
and culture; a lover of beauty of the 
ideal, aesthetic sort ; a student of pure 
science for the sake of truth alone ; not 



52 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a lover of mankind as they are : and he 
is accordingly read and appreciated by 
studied people, by scholars and the uni- 
versity-bred generally ; who, it must be 
remembered, are by no means the best 
judges of literature. Scott, like Shake- 
speare, abounds in characters drawn from 
the common people, characters whom he 
loved, real living characters, who are 
known, remembered, and cherished by all 
who make their acquaintance. Goethe 
has not one such character, and neither 
he nor any character he created is loved 
by the people. So that, having no sym- 
pathy with the common people, they 
have none with him, and care nothing 
for him or his books. 

Shakespeare not only associated fa- 
miliarly with the common people, and 
noted with interest their habits, their 
ways, and their thoughts, but having 
sprung from them himself, he always 
found himself at home among them. 
And when he became a writer for the 
stage, he obviously kept up his familiar 
relations with them ; he so demeaned 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 63 

himself as to make them feel at home 
with him, and thus enjoyed the full fla- 
vor of their life and conversation. Now 
this is precisely the conduct of the Prince. 
He puts himself on a level with the low- 
est of the people, calls them familiarly 
Tom, Dick, and Francis, and is so loved 
by them that they will fight to the death 
for him. They '' tell him flatly he is no 
proud Jack like Falstaff," and that '' when 
he is king of England he shall command 
all the good lads in Eastcheap." One 
of them, a poor tapster, even comes 
and gives him a piece of sugar by way 
of a present ! Could any great man be 
more tenderly loved by the common 
people than this? To make a Prince 
become "sworn brother to a leash of 
drawers," and such a proficient in the 
language of the vulgar as to be able 
to "drink with any tinker in his own 
language," would, in the hands of any 
other writer, probably turn out a shock- 
ing and degrading spectacle ; but in 
Shakespeare's hands it is quite natural, 
because it is just what Shakespeare did 



64 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



himself, and which he found in no way 
degrading. There was hardly any sphere 
of Hfe with which he was not acquainted, 
and probably few with which his ac- 
quaintance was not personal. So that 
he could not only ''drink with any tinker 
in his own language," but associate with 
the noblest man in England on his own 
footing, and outdo him in nobility of be- 
havior, language, and thought. Indeed, 
Davies, who probably knew him per- 
sonally, has, in his " Scourge of Folly," 
published in 1611, this excellent epigram 
on him : 

Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport, 

Thou hadst been a companion for a king, 
And been a king among the meaner sort. 

He seems to have been especially fond 
of a genial, witty, and open-hearted com- 
panion. He was doubtless as fond of 
Falstaff as Falstaff was of him ; for he 
preferred laughter to tears, and probably 
no man enjoyed a good joke better than 
he. ''In no point does Shakespeare ex- 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 55 

aggerate," says Carlyle, ''but only in 
laughter. His laughter seems to pour 
from him in floods." This is the charm 
that the Prince finds in FalstafI : this is 
the spell by which he holds him : he 
could make him " laugh till his face was 
like a wet cloak ill laid up !" ''When a 
man has created such a character as 
Falstaff," says Bagehot, "without a ca- 
pacity for laughter, then a blind man 
may succeed in describing colors. In- 
tense animal spirits are the single sen- 
timent — if they be a sentiment — of the 
entire character. If most men were to 
save up all the gayety of their whole 
lives, it would come to about the gay- 
ety of one speech in Falstaff. A morose 
man might have amassed many jokes, 
might have observed many details of 
jovial society, might have conceived a 
Sir John, marked by rotundity of body ; 
but could hardly have imagined what we 
call his rotundity of mind." 

Thus, then, this point is, I think, 
pretty clearly made out : that the Prince, 
loving wit and humor wherever he found 
5 



56 WILLIAM SBAKESPEAkE 

them, or curiously observing dulness and 
stupidity, was fond of mingling familiarly 
with the people, and talking freely and 
easily with them ; and in this the Poet 
simply presented in the Prince a faithful 
portrait of himself.* 

* While this work is passing through the press, I have had 
a glance at Mr. Donnelly's long-promised book, "The Great 
Cryptogram." Will the reader believe his own eyes, when I 
tell him, that Mr. Donnelly gravely maintains, that because 
Falstaff, in the robbery scene, exclaims, " On, bacons, on I " 
and the name Francis is, in the scene between the Prince and 
the pot-boy, repeated twenty times, Francis Bacon must have 
written the plays ! Surely this is profundity beyond example. 
Shakespearean criticism with a vengeance ! I think this dis- 
covery is about as good as that of the man who said he knew 
who had written Shakespeare's plays ; he had seen the name 
at the end of the book ; his name was " Finis " ! 

I shall have something to say of this Donnelly business in 
a subsequent chapter. 



POKTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 



6; 



CHAPTER VI. 

'* LOOK HERE UPON THIS PICTURE, AND 
THEN ON THIS ! " 

HERE is another conversation be- 
tween the Prince and Poins, which, 
if it do not show the former as a man of 
the people, famiHar with the ways and 
thoughts of the people, loving the com- 
mon things of the people, even *' small 
beer," and, notwithstanding his rank, en- 
joying to the full all the common pleas- 
ures of the people, then is there no such 
man In literature. There is something, 
indeed, so quietly like the man Shake- 
speare all over this scene, that it mightily 
fortifies my supposition that the Poet 
simply drew his own In the character of 
the Prince : 

SCENE II. London : A street. 
Enter Prince Henry and Poins. 
Prince. Trust me, I am exceeding weary. 



68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Foi?is. Is it come to that ? I had thought weari- 
ness durst not have attached one of so high blood. 

Prince. 'Faith it does me, though it discolors the 
complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. 
Dolh it not show vilely in me to desire small beer? 

roiiis. Why^ a prince should not be so loosely 
studied, as to remember so weak a composition. 

Fr'mce. Belike, then, my appetite was not 
princely got ; for, by my troth, I do now remember 
the poor creature, small beer. But, indeed, these 
humble considerations make me out of love with my 
greatness. What a disgrace it is to me to remem- 
ber thy name ? or to know thy face to-morrow .'* or 
to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou 
hast; namely, these, and those that were thy peach- 
colored ones ? or to bear the inventory of thy shirts: 
as, one for superfluity, and one other for use? — but 
that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I, 
for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou 
keep'st not racket there ; as thou hast not done a 
great while, because the rest of thy low-countries 
have made a shift to eat up thy holland ; and God 
knows whether those that bawl out the ruins of thy 
linen shall inherit His kingdom ; but the midwives 
say, the children are not in the fault, whereupon 
the world increases, and kindreds are mightily 
strengthened. 

Poins. How ill it follows, after you have labored 
so hard, you should talk so idly ! — Tell me, how 
many good young princes would do so, their fathers 
being so sick as yours at this time is ? 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



69 



Prince. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins ? 

Foins. Yes, faith ; and let it be an excellent good 
thing. 

Prince. It shall serve among wits of no higher 
breeding than thine. 

Foifis. Go to ; I stand the push of your one 
thing that 3^ou will tell. 

Prince. Marry, I tell thee,— it is not meet that I 
should be sad, now my father is sick ; albeit I could 
tell to thee (as to one it pleases me, for fault of a 
better, to call my friend), I could be sad, and sad 
indeed too. 

Poins. Very hardly, upon such a subject. 

Prince. By this hand, thou think'st me as far in 
the devil's book as thou and Falstaff, for obduracy 
and persistency. Let the end try the man. But I 
tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is 
so sick ; and keeping such vile company as thou art 
hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of 
sorrow. 

Poins. The reason ? 

Prince. What would'st thou think of me if I 
should weep t 

Poins, I would think thee a most princely hypo- 
crite. 

Prince. It would be every man's thought ; and 
thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man 
thinks. Never a man's thought in the world keeps 
the roadway better than thine : every man would 
think me a hypocrite indeed. And what accites 
your most worshipful thought to think so ? 



^p WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Poins. Why, because you have been so lewd, 
and so much engraffed to Falstaff. 

Prince. And to thee. 

Poins, By this light, I am well spoken of : I can 
hear it with my own ears. The worst that they 
can say of me is, that I am a second brother, and 
that I am a proper fellow of my hands ; and those 
two things I confess I cannot help. — By the mass, 
here comes Bardolph. 

'' Let the end try the man ! " That's 
it : the Prince is, even in the play, no 
actual rake and debauchee, but a wise, 
witty, thoughtful man ; charmed, it is 
true, by the wit and humor of the most 
fascinating of loose companions, and en- 
joying for a season the mirth, jollity, and 
high spirits of a riotous company ; but 
not in spirit one of them. He loves 
what is good in them, but despises their 
vices. It is plain that his companions 
mistake him ; they think him as bad as 
themselves; for Poins obviously thinks 
him so devoid of natural affection as to 
be capable of joy at the news of his 
father's death. But he is mistaken ; the 
Prince is quite a different man. He is by 
no means "so far in the devil's book" as 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



71 



they are ; and he comes out in the sequel, 
as the original did, unscathed, and all the 
wiser for his experience among them. 
If he were an abandoned rake, how could 
he be made to act and think so wisely 
when away from them ? how could he 
encounter and conquer that prince of 
warriors, Hotspur? and if he were not of 
a generous heart and philosophic mind, 
how could he be made to pronounce such 
a noble speech over the dead body of 
this his conquered enemy ? — 

Fare thee well, great heart I— 
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk ! 
When that this body did contain a spirit, 
A kingdom for it was too small a bound ; 
But now, two paces of the vilest earth 
Is room enough. This earth, that bears thee dead, 
Bears not alive so brave a gentleman. 
If thou wert sensible of courtesy, 
I should not make so dear a show of zeal ; 
But let my favors hide thy mangled face ; 
And even in thy behalf, I'll thank myself 
For doing these fair rites of tenderness. 
Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven ! 
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave. 
But not remembered in thy epitaph! 



72 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Is there not a touch of Hamlet in this 
speech ? Could the philosophic Dane 
have uttered more generous, thoughtful 
words ? O how sincerely, how fervently 
we could apply these last lines to the 
Prince himself ! 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



73 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE MERRY MEETING THE DEER-STEAL- 
ING ADVENTURE. 

NOW comes the famous scene after 
the robbery, a scene which, besides 
being crammed with wit, humor, and 
jolhty, gives such a vivid picture of the 
character whom we are endeavoring to 
identify with that of the Poet, that he 
who has read it a hundred times may 
well afford, in this new light, to read it 
again. Indeed, I trust that every one 
who reads this essay will henceforth read 
the entire play with much more insight, 
much more pleasure and satisfaction than 
he ever read it before. 

Passing Falstaff's extraordinary account 
of his bravery, let me quote the conclud- 
ing part of this marvellously interesting 
scene : 



74 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Prince. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it 
again ; and when thou hast tired thyself in base 
comparisons, hear me speak but this. 

Foins. Mark, Jack. 

Prince. We two saw you four set on four ; you 
bound them, and were masters of their wealth. — 
Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down. — • 
Then did we two set on you four: and, with a 
word, out-faced you from your prize, and have it ; 
yea, and can show it you here in the house : — And 
Falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with 
as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy, and still 
ran and roared, as ever I heard bull-calf. What 
a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast 
done; and then say, it was in fight! What trick, 
what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find 
out, to hide thee from this open and apparent 
shame ? 

Foins. Come, let's hear, Jack : what trick hast 
thou now ? 

Fal. By the Lord, I knew ye, as well as He that 
made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters : Was it for 
me to kill the heir-apparent ? Should I turn upon 
the true prince ? Why, thou knowest, I am as val- 
iant as Hercules ; but beware instinct : the lion 
will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great 
matter ; I was a coward on instinct. I shall think 
the better of myself and thee, during my life : I 
for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, 
by the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money. 
—Hostess, clap to the doors ; watch to-night. 



POR TkA VED B Y mMSELP. jt^ 

pray to-morrow. — Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of 
gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you ! 
What, shall we be merry ? shall we have a play 
extempore ? 

Prince, Content ; — and the argument shall be 
thy running away. 

FaL Ah ! no more of that, Hal, an thou loves t 

me. 

Enter Hostess, 

Host. My lord the prince, — 

Prinee. How now, my lady the hostess? what 
say'st thou to me ? 

Host, Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of 
the court at door would speak with you : he says, 
he comes from your father. 

Prince. Give him as much as will make him a 
royal man, and send him back again to my mother. 

Fal. What manner of man is he ? 

Host. An old man. 

Fal. What doth gravity out of his bed at mid- 
night ? — Shall I give him his answer ? 

Prince. Pr'ythee, do. Jack. 

Fal. 'Faith, and I'll send him packing. \Exit. 

Prince. Now, sirs ; by'r lady, you fought fair ; — 
so did you, Peto ; so did you, Bardolph : you are 
lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not 
touch the true prince v no, — fye ! 

Bard. 'Faith, I ran when I saw others run. 

Prince. Tell me now in earnest, how came Fal- 
staff's sword so hacked ? 

Peto. Why, he hacked it with his dagger; and 



>76' VVILUAM SHAKESPEARE 

said he would swear truth out of England, but he 
would make you believe it was done in fight ; and 
persuaded us to do the like. 

Bard. Yea, and to tickle our noses with spear- 
grass to make them bleed : and then to beslubber 
our garments with it, and to swear it was the blood 
of true men. I did that I did not this seven year 
before ; I blushed to hear his monstrous devices. 

Prince. O, villain, thou stolest a cup of sack 
eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the man- 
ner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore ! 
Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou 
ran'st away. What instinct hadst thou for it ? 

Bard. My lord, do you see these meteors ? do 
you behold these exhalations? 

Prince. I do. 

Bard. What think you they portend ? 

Prince. Hot livers and cold purses. 

Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken. 

Prince. No, if rightly taken, halter. 

Re-enter Falstaff. 

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How 
now, my sweet creature of bombast ? How long 
is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee t 

Pal. My own knee ? when I was about thy years, 
Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist ; I could 
have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring. A 
plague of sighing and grief ! it blows a man up like 
a bladder. There's villanous news abroad : here 
was Sir John Bracy from your father ; you must to 



PORTKA YED B V B IMS ELF. 



77 



the court in the morning. That same mad fellow 
of the north, Percy ; and he of Wales, that gave 
Amaimon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuck- 
old, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the 
cross of a Welsh hook, — what, a plague, call you 
him ? — 

Poins, O, Glendower. 

Fal. Owen, Owen ; the same ; — and his son-in- 
law, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that 
sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o'horse- 
back up a hill perpendicular. 

Prince. He that rides at high speed, and with 
his pistol kills a sparrow flying. 
Fal. You have hit it. 
PiHnce. So did he never the sparrow. 
Fal. Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him ; 
he will not run. 

Prince. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to 
praise him so for running ? 

Fal. O'horseback, ye cuckoo ! but, afoot, he will 
not budge a foot. 

Prince. Yes, Jack, upon instinct. 
Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there 
too, and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps 
more. Worcester is stolen away to-night; thy fa- 
ther's bt^ard is turned white with the news: you 
may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel. 

Prince. Why, then, ';is like, if there comes a hot 

June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy 

maidenheads as they buv hob-nails, by the hundred. 

Fal. By the mass, lad, ihou sayest true; it is 



;B 



H^ILLIAM SHAA'ESPEARE 



like, we shall have good trading that way. — But tell 
me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard ? thou being 
heir-apparent, could the world pick thee out three 
such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that 
spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower ? Art thou 
not horribly afraid ? doth not thy blood thrill at it ? 

Prince. Not a whit, i'faith; I lack some of thy 
instinct. 

Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, 
when thou comest to thy father : if thou love me, 
practise an answer. 

Prince. Do thou stand for my father, and ex- 
amine me upon the particulars of my life. 

Fal. Shall I "i content : — This chair shall be my 
state, this dagger my scepter, and this cushion my 
crown. 

Prince. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy 
golden scepter for a leaden dagger, and thy precious 
rich crown, for a pitiful bald crown ! 

Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out 
of thee, now shalt thou be moved. — Give me a cup 
of sack, to make mine eyes look red, that it may be 
thought I have wept ; for I must speak in passion, 
and I will do it in king Cambyses' vein. 

Prince. Well, here is my leg. 

Fal. And here is my speech : — Stand aside, 
nobility. 

Host. This is excellent sport, i'faith. 

Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears 
are vain. 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



79 



Host, O, the father ! how he holds his counte- 
nance ! 

Fa/. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful 
queen, 
For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes. 

Ifosf. O rare ! he doth it as like one of these 
harlotry players as I ever see. 

Fa/. Peace, good pint-pot ; peace, good tickle- 
brain. — Harry, I do not only marvel where thou 
spendest thy time, but also how iliou art accom- 
panied : for though the camomile, the more it is 
trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more 
it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my 
son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own 
opinion; but chiefly, a villanous trick of thine eye, 
and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth 
warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies 
the point; — Why, being son to me, art thou so 
pointed at .'* Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove 
a micher, and eat blackberries ? a question not to 
be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, 
and take purses ^ a question to be asked. There 
is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, 
and it is known to many in our land by the name 
of pitch : this pitch, as ancient writers do report, 
doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest : 
for, Harr}', now I do not speak to thee in drink, 
but in tears ; not in ]:)leasure, but in passion ; not 
in words only, but in woes also : — And yet there is 
a virtuous man, whom I have often noted in thy 
company, but I know not his name. 



go WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Prince. What manner of man, an it like your 
majesty ? 

Fal. A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpu- 
lent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most 
noble carriage ; and, as I think, his age some fifty, 
or by'r-lady, inclining to three-score ; and now I 
remember me, his name is Faistaff: if that man 
should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me ; fdr, Harry, 
I see virtue in his looks. If then the tree may be 
known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, 
peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Fai- 
staff : him keep with, the rest banish. And tell rrie 
now, thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou 
been this month ? 

Prince, Dost thou speak like a king ? Do thou 
stand for me, and I'll play my father. 

Fal, Depose me ? if thou dost it half so gravely, 
so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me 
up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulter's 
hare. 

Prince. Well, here I am set. 

Fal. And here I stand : — judge, my masters. 

Prince. Now, Harry ! whence come you .'' 

Fal, My noble lord, from Eastcheap. 

Prince, The complaints I hear of thee are griev- 
ous. 

Fal. 'Sblood, my lord, they are false : — nay, I'll 
tickle ye for a young prince, i'faith. 

Prince, Swearest thou, ungracious boy ? hence- 
forth ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried 
away from grace : there is a devil haunts thee, in 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, g j 

the likeness of a fat old man : a tun of man is thy 
companion. Why dost thou converse with that 
trunk of humors, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, 
that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard 
of sack, that stuffed cloak- bag of guts, that roasted 
Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, 
that reverend vice, that gray iniquity, that father 
ruffian, that vanity in years ? Wherein is he good, 
but to taste sack and drink it ? wherein neat and 
cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein 
cunning, but in craft ? wherein crafty, but in vil- 
lany ? wherein villanous, but in all things ? wherein 
worthy, but in nothing ? 

Fal. I would your grace would take me with 
you ; whom means your grace ? 

Prince. That villanous abominable misleader of 
youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan. 

Fal. My lord, the man I know. 

Prince. I know thou dost. 

Fal. But to say, I know more harm in him than 
in myself, were to say more than I know. That he 
is old (the more the pity) his white hairs do witness 
it : but that he is (saving your reverence) a whore- 
master, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a 
fault, God help the wicked ! If to be old and merry 
be a sin, then many an old host that I know is 
damned : if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's 
lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord ; ban- 
ish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins : but for 
sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack 
Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more 



82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

valiant, being as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not 
him thy Harry's company ; banish plump Jack, and 
banish all the world. 

Prince. I do, I will. \A knocking heard. 

\Exeunt Hostess^ Francis, and Bardolph. 

Re-enter Bardolph, running. 

Bard. O, my lord, my lord ! the sheriif, with a 
most monstrous watch, is at the door. 

Fal. Out, you rogue ! play out the play : I have 
much to say in the behalf of that Falstaif. 

Re-enter Hostess, hastily. 

Host. O Jesu, my lord, my lord ! — 

Fal, Heigh ! heigh ! the devil rides upon a 
fiddlestick ; What's the matter ? 

Host. The sheriff and all the watch are at the 
door : they are come to search the house. Shall I 
let them in ? 

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal ? never call a true 
piece of gold, a counterfeit: thou art essentially 
mad, without seeming so. 

Prince. And thou a natural coward, without 
instinct. 

Fal. I deny your major ; if you will deny the 
sheriff, so ; if not, let him enter : if I become not a 
cart as well as another man, a plague on my bring- 
ing up ! I hope I shall as soon be strangled with a 
halter as another. 

Prince. Go, hide thee behind the arras ; — the rest 



POKTRA YED 11 Y J/J MS ELF. 



83 



walk up above. Now, my masters, for a true face 
and a good conscience. 

Fal. Both which I have had : but their date is 
out, and therefore I'll hide me. 

\Exeimt all but the Prince a7id Poins. 

Prince. Call in the sheriff. — 

Enter Sheriff and Carrier. 

Now, master Sheriff, what's your will with me ? 

Sher. First, pardon me, my lord. A hue and cry 
Hath followed certain men into this house. 

Prince. What men ? 

Sher. One of them is well known, my gracious 
lord, 
A gross fat man. 

Car. As fat as butter. 

Prince. The man, I do assure you, is not here ; 
For I myself at this time have employed him. 
And, Sheriff, I will engage my word to thee. 
That I will, by to-morrow dinner-time. 
Send him to answer thee, or any man. 
For any thing he shall be charged withal : 
And so let me entreat you leave the house. 

Sher. I will, my lord. There are two gentlemen 
Have in this robbery lost three hundred marks. 

Prince. It may be so : if he have robbed these 
men. 
He shall be answerable ; and so, farewell. 

Sher. Good night, my noble lord. 

Prince. I think it is good-morrow ; is it not ? 



84 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Sher. Indeed, my lord, I think it be two oclock. 

\Exeunt Sheriff and Carrier, 

Prince. This oily rascal is known as well as 
Paul's. Go call him forth. 

Poi7is. Falstaff ! Fast asleep behind the arras, 
and snorting like a horse. 

Prince. Hark, how hard he fetches breath! 
Search his pockets. [PoiNS searches.'] What hast 
thou found .-* 

Poins. Nothing but papers, my lord. 

Prince. Let's see what they be : read them. 

Poins. Item, A capon, 2S, 2d. 
Item, Sauce, 4^. 
Item, Sack, two gallons, 5^". 8^. 
Item, Anchovies, and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. 
Item, Bread, a half-penny. 

Prince. O monstrous ! but one half-pennyworth 
of bread to this intolerable deal of sack 1 — What 
there is else, keep close ; we'll read it at more ad- 
vantage : there let him sleep till day. I'll to the 
court in the morning : we must all to the wars, and 
thy place shall be honorable. I'll procure this fat 
rogue a charge of foot ; and, I know, his death will 
be a march of twelve-score. The money shall be 
paid back again with advantage. Be with me be- 
times in the morning ; and so good-morrow, Poins. 

Poins. Good-morrow, good my lord. 

Now let the reader peruse Halliwell's 
account of the deer-stealing adventure, 
and judge for himself if it have not 



POkTRA YED BY HIMSELF. gj 

given rise to this scene in the play, as 
well as to the satire on Sir Thonias Lucy, 
which shall be given presently. 

"The public records contain many notices of 
deer-stealing. In 1583 Lord Berkeley issued a bill 
in the Star Chamber against twenty persons who 
had hunted deer unlawfully in his forests. The 
answer of William Waare, one of the defendants, is 
preserved in the Chapter House, Westminster, xciv. 
24, and he confesses having killed a doe, but, not- 
withstanding that admission, asserts that the pro- 
ceedings against him were malicious and uncalled- 
for. Fosbroke (Hist. Glouc. i. 125) mentions an 
anecdote tending to show that respectable persons 
in the county of Gloucestershire, adjoining War- 
wickshire, were not ashamed of the practice of deer- 
stealing. Several attorneys and others, ' all men of 
metall, and good woodmen, / mean old notorious 
deer-stealers, well armed, came in the night-time to 
Michael wood wdth deer-nets and dogs, to steale 
deer.' Falstaff asks, * Am I a woodman ? ' Can it 
have been an old cant term for a deer-stealer ? If 
so, Falstaff's speech may allude to what is stated 
in the commencement of the Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor, 

" Shakespeare is said, on good authority, to have 
been implicated in a frolic of this kind ; and, al- 
though the earliest notice of the tale was not 
penned till nearly eighty years after the death of 
the poet, yet the person who recorded it resided in 



g^ muJASr StrAK'^SPi^AKE 

a neighboring county, and being a clergyman, with 
no moiive whatever to mislead, his testimony is of 
great value. Tiie Rev. William Fulman, who dieil 
in lOSS, bequeathed his biographical collections to 
his friend, the Rev. Richard Da vies, rector of Sap- 
perton in Gloucestershire, who made several addi- 
tions to ihem. Davies died in 170S, and these 
manuscripts were presented to the library of Cor- 
pus Christi C\^llege, Oxford, where they are still 
preserved. Under the article Shakrsfearr, Fulman 
made very few notes, and those of little impor- 
tance ; but Davies inserted the curious information, 
so important in the consideration of the deer-steal- 
ing story. The following is a complete copy of 
what the manuscript contains respecting Shake- 
speare : 

"•Willi.im Shakespeare was born at Stratford- 
upon-Avon in Warwickshire, about 1563-4. Much 
given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rab- 
bits, particularly from Sr Lucv, who had him 

oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last 
made him tly his native countrj*, to his great advance- 
ment ; but his revenge was so great, that he is his 
Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and 
that, in allusion to his name, bore three louses ram- 
pant for his arms. From an actor of plays he be- 
came a composer. He dyed April 23d, 161 6, jetat. 
53. probably at Stratford, for there he is buryed, and 
hath a monument ^^Du^J. p. 520), on which he lays 
a heavy curse upon any one who shal remoove his 
bones. He dyed a papist.' " 



tOkTHA YF.t) IBV ///U.'iEi./': 



87 



Rowe, who wrote the first account of 
Shakespeare's life, published in 1709, 
ninety-three years after the Poet's death, 
thus recounts the deer-stealing episode : 

" In this kind of settlemenl Shakespeare contin- 
ued for some time, till an extravagance that he was 
guilty of, forced him both out of his country and 
that way of living which he had taken up; and, 
though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his 
good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it after- 
wards happily proved the occasion of exerting one 
of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in 
dramatic poetry. He had, by a misfortune common 
enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company ; 
and among them some, that made a frequent prac- 
tice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more 
than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir 
Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For 
this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he 
thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to 
revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. 
And though this, probably the first essay of his 
poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very 
bitter, that it redoubled the pro.secution against 
him, to tliat degree that he was obliged to leave his 
business and family in Warwickshire for some time, 
and shelter himself in London." 

Does not this look like the quarry 
whence the above scenes were taken ? 



gg WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Did not the Poet simply improve real life 
by the colors of his imagination ? All 
good scenes in fiction have a substratum 
of truth in them ; all the best characters 
of our first-class novelists and dramatists 
are drawn from life. Mr. H alii well, after 
quoting the above passage from the Rev. 
Richard Davies, continues : 

" This testimony has been doubted, because no 
such character as Clodpate occurs in any of Shake- 
peare's plays ; but it was a generic term of the 
time for a foolish person, and that Davies so used 
it, there can, I think, be little doubt. In the MS. 
account of Warwickshire, 1693, before quoted, the 
writer calls the judge of the Warwick assizes Mr. 
Justice Clodpate, intending to characterize him as 
an ignorant, stupid man. The ' three louses ram- 
pant ' refer to the arms actually borne by Lucy. 
The * dozen white luces ' in the play is merely one 
of Slender's mistakes. At all events, here we have 
the earliest explanation of the remarkable satirical 
allusions to the Lucy family at the commencement 
of the Merry Wives of Windsor. * I will make a Star 
Chamber matter of it,' says Justice Shallow ; and 
we have just seen that the offence of deer-stealing 
was referred to that arbitrary court. ' You have 
beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my 
lodge.' Davies tells us, moreover, what we should 
have believed independently of his authority, that 



POkTRAYED By himself. 



89 



Sir Thomas Lucy was ridiculed under one of his 
characters. That character is Justice Shallow, and 
the satire is by no means confined to one play. 
There can be little doubt but that the exquisite de- 
scriptions of a country justice of the peace in the 
second part of Henry IV. are in some degree 
founded upon Sir Thomas Lucy. When Falstaff 
says, * If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, 
I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may 
snap at him,' we see a direct personal allusion, a luce 
being merely a full-grown pike. Harrison, in his 
' Description of England,' p. 224, says, * The pike, 
as he ageth, receiveth diverse names, as from a f rie 
to a gilthed, from a gilthed to a pod, from a pod to 
a jacke, from a jacke to a pickerell, from a pickerell 
to a pike, and last of all to a luce.' Shallow's dec- 
laration, * I am, sir, under the king, in some author- 
ity,' the constant ebullitions of importance where so 
much is inadequate in his nature to support it, and 
touches that give his whole character the air of a 
semi-ludicrous creation, would more severely wound 
an individual, if Sir Thomas was recognized by 
such foibles, than the keenest verses attached to 
the gate of Charlecote Park. I trust that in adopt- 
ing this view of the case, believing the account 
given by Davies to shadow the truth, I am not fall- 
ing into the error of particularizing a generic char- 
acter. I am too well aware that Shakespeare's in- 
ventions were 'not of an age, but for all time ; ' but 
in this instance we have palpable evidence of an 
allusion to an individual, a neighbor of Shake- 



06 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



speare's, introduced in a manner to leave no room 
for hesitating to believe that a retaliating satire was 
intended. Again, observe how severe is Falstaff 
on Shallow's administration of justice, on the ' sem- 
blable coherence of his men's spirits and his,' 
Davy's interceding for his frien^ Visor is one of the 
keenest satires of the kind to be found in Shake- 
speare." 

Then Mr. Halliwell shows the remark- 
able fact that Shakespeare ''adopted the 
names of his characters from his neigh- 
bors in Warwickshire." Even Shake- 
speare's father is found, among the 
records of Stratford, to be associated 
with one named Fluellen and another 
named Bardolph in a fine for not attend- 
ing church ! This, certainly, is Bardol- 
phean enough ; and, for aught we know, 
he may be the very prototype of the red- 
nosed companion of Falstaff. Why, 
therefore, should it be thought incredible 
that he should draw the likenesses as 
well as adopt the names of his neigh- 
bors? Why, should it be thought in- 
credible that he should paint others 
whom he knew besides Sir Thomas Lucy, 
and especially one living character, whom 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. g j 

he knew best of all ? I have no doubt 
that a Stratfordlan would not only have 
discovered Sir Thomas Lucy in Justice 
Shallow, but would have recognized in 
Falstaff and Bardolph two other well- 
known Warwickshire characters. And if 
he were an intimate friend, he would 
have recognized the Poet himself in the 
Prince, and enjoyed the play even more 
than the Londoners ; — for Shakespeare 
no more invented men than he invented 
plots; he adopted those. whom he found 
among his neighbors and associates, and 
sometimes the very names along with 
the characters. In fact, I think he 
wrote the whole play with real names all 
the way through, and only changed them 
when the play was copied. And is not 
this item, the examininof of Falstaff's 
pockets, such a thing as the character- 
studying poet might be guilty of ? Could 
anything be more natural to a man who 
could ''drink with any tinker in his own 
language," play such fantastic tricks with 
tapsters, and disguise himself as a 
"drawer" or pot-boy in a practical joke? 



92 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Who that knows anything of tavern-life 
has not seen such a thing? Between the 
poet and one of his boon companions 
nothing could be more natural ; especially 
when we consider what use he made of it, 
and how completely he exposed the old 
fox when he complained of being robbed 
of "four bonds of forty pounds apiece, 
and a seal-ring of his grandfather's : " 

Prince. .... Charge an honest woman with 
picking thy pocket ! Why, thou impudent embossed 
rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tav- 
ern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and 
one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to make thee 
long-winded ; if thy pocket were enriched with any 
other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet 
you will stand to it ; you will not pocket up wrong ; 
art thou not ashamed ? 

Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal ? thou knowest, in the 
state of innocency Adam fell ; and what should 
poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villany ? Thou 
seest I have more flesh than another man, and there- 
fore more frailty. — You confess, then, you picked 
my pocket ? 

Prince. It seems so by the story. 

I have always looked upon the Gads- 
hill exploit and its sequel as but another 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



93 



version of one of Shakespeare's own deer- 
stealing adventures, and upon Falstaff as 
a portrait of one of his early associates 
in these adventures. The thing looks too 
real to be an invention ; especially as 
Shakespeare never invented plots, but 
seized upon those that he found at hand. 
Falstaff is obviously a picture of one of 
those witty roysterers with whom he 
passed many a merry hour in the days 
when he 

" went gypsying, a long time ago ; *' 

one of those ''young fellows" into whose 
" ill company " he had fallen ; and I am 
sure he took as much delight In painting 
the picture as we take in the observation 
of it. 

Of course, I know that Falstaff (or 
Oldcastle, which was the name first given 
him) is a character in history ; but there 
is no more resemblance between the Fal- 
staff of history and the Falstaff of Shake- 
speare than between chalk and cheese. 
Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cob- 
ham, was a person of an entirely different 



94 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



character from Falstaff ; and the Fas- 
tolfe of the French wars is a man of 
whom we know almost nothing. In fact, 
these historical characters are mere skel- 
etons or shadows of men ; while Shake- 
speare's Falstafif is a real, substantial 
man, full of all that is living and life- 
like in spirit and conversation, witty, 
jovial, genial, sensible, — perhaps the 
most real, living and substantial char- 
acter in literature. Such a character 
could not be taken from any musty his- 
torical records, but from the author's 
intimate personal acquaintance ; he was 
a man with whom he had lived, laughed, 
and talked in familiar daily intercourse. 
No real live character is ever conjured up 
from the imagination ; such a character 
must be taken from life. Who that has 
mixed mjch amonor men has not known 
such a man as Falstaff ? Yet who among 
men is able to paint him like the great 
master ? 

Indeed, I think Shakespeare had, like 
most good writers of fiction, a living rep- 
resentative for nearly every character he 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 



95 



drew : that is, he idealized living or real 
characters, and made them show them- 
selves more completely themselves than 
they ever actually did in life. A word 
or an incident often unfolded to him the 
whole soul of a man, and when he wanted 
to portray him, he showed him as he 
saw him ; he knew how he would think, 
talk, and act on given occasions, and 
painted him accordingly. Thus many a 
scene in which Falstaff appears is not an 
actual transcript of what occurred, but of 
what would occur were he actually in that 
situation. " I have little doubt," says 
Washington Irving, "that in early life, 
when running like an unbroken colt about 
the neighborhood of Stratford, Shake- 
speare was to be found in the company 
of all kinds of anomalous characters [is it 
not a peculiarity of genius to seek out 
such characters ?] ; that he associated 
with all the madcaps of the place, and was 
one of those unlucky urchins, at mention 
of whom old men shake their heads, and 
predict that they will one day come to 
the gallows." Precisely. So did people 



96 



WILLIAM snAKESPRAkE 



predict of Prince Henry ; so have people 
predicted of many another man of genius. 
Shakespeare well remembered these pre- 
dictions ; and he makes the Prince deter- 
mine, like him, to disappoint those who 
'Mid forethink his fall." 

To show that the Poet was in the 
habit of portraying real characters and 
real scenes, let me quote a striking 
passage from Halliwell-Phillipps' ** Out- 
lines of the Life of Shakespeare," where- 
in he describes the origin of Christo- 
pher Sly in the Induction to the Tain- 
ing of the Shrew. " That delicious epi- 
sode," says he, '* presents us with a frag- 
ment of the rural life with which Shake- 
speare himself must have been familiar in 
his native county. With such animated 
power is it written, that we almost appear 
to personally witness the affray between 
Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Win- 
cot, afid Christopher Sly ; to see the 
nobleman on his return from the chsis^t 
discovering the insensible drunkard ; and 
to hear the strolling actors make the offer 
of professional services, which was re- 



POU TEA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



97 



quited by the cordial welcome to the but- 
tery. Wincot is a secluded hamlet near 
Stratford-on-Avon, and there is an old 
tradition that the ale-house frequented 
by Sly was often resorted to by Shake- 
speare for the sake of diverting himself 
with a fool who belonged to a neighbor- 
ing mill. [Could anything be more like 
the conduct of the Prince ?] Stephen 
Sly, one of the tinkers friends or rela- 
tives, was a known character at Stratford- 
on-Avon, and is several times mentioned 
in the records of that town. This fact, 
taken in conjunction with the references 
to Wilmecote and Burton-on-the-Heath, 
definitely prove that the scene of the In- 
duction was intended to be in the neigh- 
borhood of Stratford-on-Avon, the water- 
mill tradition leading to the belief that 
little Wilmecote, the part of the hamlet 
nearest to the Poet's native town, is the 
Wincot alluded to in the comedy." 

Now, as Justice Shallow is universally 

acknowledged to be the portrait of a 

Stratfordian, and as I wish to let the 

reader see the Visor satire and the truth 

7 



98 



WILLIAM SRAICESPEARE 



of Mr. Halllwell's conclusions, I think it 
worth his while for him to take a glance 
at the character, as presented in the 
Second Part of Henry IV,, Act V. 

SCENE I.— Gloucestershire. A Hall in Shal- 
low's House. 

Enter Shallow, Falstaff, Bardolph, and Page. 

Shal. By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away 
to-night. — What, Davy, I say! 

Fal. You must excuse me, master Robert Shal- 
low. 

Shal, I will not excuse you ; you shall not be 

excused ; excuses shall not be admitted ; there is 

no excuse shall serve ; you shall not be excused. — 

Why, Davy 1 

Enter Davy. 

Davy. Here, sir. 

Shal. Davy, Davy, Davy, — let me see, Davy ; let 
me see : — yea, marry, William cook, bid him come 
hither. — Sir John, you shall not be excused. 

Davy. Marry, sir, thus : — those warrants cannot 
be served : and, again, sir, — shall we sow the head- 
land with wheat ? 

Shal. With red wheat, Davy. But for William 
cook •, — Are there no young pigeons ? 

Davy. Yes, sir. — Here is now the smith's note, 
for shoeing, and for plough-irons. 

Shal, Let it be cast up, and paid. — Sir John, you 
shall not be excused. 

Davy. Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. gg 

needs be had.— And, sir, do you mean to stop any 
of William's wages, about the sack he lost the other 
day at Hinckley fair ? 

Shal, He shall answer it : — Some pigeons, 
Davy ; a couple of short legged hens ; a joint of 
mutton ; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell 
William cook. 

Davy. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir ? 

Shal. Yes, Davy, I will use him well. A friend 
i'the court is better than a penny in purse. Use his 
men well, Davy ; for they are arrant knaves, and 
will backbite. 

Davy. No worse than they are backbitten, sir; 
for they have marvelous foul linen. 

Shal Well conceited, Davy. About thy busi- 
ness, Davy. 

Davy. I beseech you, sir, to countenance Wil- 
liam Visor of Wincot, against Clement Perkes of 
the hill. 

ShaL There are many complaints, Davy, against 
that Visor; that Visor is an arrant knave, on my 
knowledge. 

Davy. I grant your worship, that he is a knave, 
sir; but yet, God forbid, sir, but a knave should 
have some countenance at his friend's request. An 
honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when 
a knave is not. I have served your worship truly, 
sir, this eight years ; and if I cannot once or twice 
in a quarter bear out a knave against an honest 
man, I have but a very little credit with your wor- 
ship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir; there- 



100 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

fore, I beseech your worship, let him be counte- 
nanced. 

ShaL Go to; I say, he shall have no wrong. 
Look about, Davy. \Exit Davy.] Where are you, 
Sir John.? Come, off with your boots. — Give me 
your hand, master Bardolph. 

Bard. I am glad to see your worship. 

ShaL I thank thee with all my heart, kind mas- 
ter Bardolph : — and welcome, my tall fellow. \To 
the Page.'] Come, Sir John. ^ [Exit Shallow. 

Fal. I'll follow you, good master Robert Shallow. - 
Bardolph, look to our horses. [jS'jc<?z^«/ Bardolph 
and jPage.] If I were sawed into quantities, I 
should make four dozen of such bearded hermit's- 
staves as master Shallow. It is a wonderful thing 
to see the semblable coheretice of his men's spirits 
and his: they, by observing him, do bear them- 
selves like foolish justices ; he, by conversing with 
them, is turned into a justice-like serving man ; their 
spirits are so married in conjunction with the parti- 
cipation of society, that they flock together in con- 
sent, like so many wild-geese. If I had a suit to 
master Shallow, I would humor his men with the 
imputation of being near their master: if to his men, 
I would curry with master Shallow, that no man 
could better command his servants. It is certain, 
that either wise bearing, or ignorant carriage, is 
caught, as men take diseases, one of another ". there- 
fore, let men take heed of their company. I wiH" 
devise matter enough out of this Shallmv^ to keep 
Prince Harry in continual laughLter,:the wearing-out 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. loi 

of six fashions (which is four terms, or two actions), 
and he shall laugh without intervallums. O, it is 
much, that a lie, with a slight oath, and a jest, with 
a sad brow, will do with a fellow that never had 
the ache in his shoulders ! O, you shall see him 
laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up. 

ShaL [Within] Sir John ! 

Fal, I come, master Shallow ; I come, master 
Shallow. 

There is one point in the concluding 
part of the scene after the robbery that 
ought to be noticed — that in which the 
Prince for the first and only time acts 
unlike himself, and tells a deliberate 
falsehood. 

J The man, I do assure you, is not here ; 

' For I myself at this time have employed him. 

It may be said, that this is merely a 
white lie, quite allowable in aristocratic 
circles, according to the morals of that 
day. But a lie is never allowable in the 
mouth of a gentleman, least of all in that 
of a prince. Nor is it a sufficient excuse 
to say the Prince had to do this to screen 
his companion and save him from prison. 
The Poet could have made him give 



102 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

some excuse without absolute falsehood ; 
but perhaps he wished to show that the 
Prince had not escaped altogether unin- 
jured in associating with persons of ques- 
tionable character. His conduct is a 
practical illustration of the words he sub- 
sequently puts in the mouth of Falstaff 
touching Justice Shallow: " It is certain, 
that either wise bearing or ignorant car- 
riage is caught, as men take diseases one 
of another ; therefore, let men take heed 
of their company." The Prince had just 
listened to and laughed immoderately at 
a batch of the most monstrous lies ; and 
lying, which had become the order of the 
night, was looked upoh as mere fun. 
Might not Shakespeare have remembered 
that he too had '* done those things which 
he ought not to have done, and left un- 
done those things which he ought to have 
done ? " and, wishing to make the portrait 
complete, he set down the blotches as 
well as the graces. 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



103 



CHAPTER VIII. 

" TURNING PAST EVILS TO ADVANTAGES." 

BUT perhaps the strongest evidence 
yet presented of the truth of my 
theory, is that displayed in the Fourth 
Act, Fourth Scene, of the Second Part 
of Henry IV, I beg the reader carefully 
to note, in this scene, the king's charac- 
terization of the Prince, and especially 
the Earl of Warwick's account of the mo- 
tives which induced him to select such 
company as he keeps. 

Westminster. A Room in the Palace. 
Enter the King, his sons Clarence and 'K\5^i- 
viiKEY, the Earl of Warwick, and others^ 
King. Now, lords, if God doth give successful 
end 
To this debate that bleedeth at our doors, 
We will our youth lead on to higher fields, 
And draw no swords but what are sanctified. 
Our navy is addressed, our power collected. 



104 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Our substitutes in absence well invested, 
And everything lies level to our wish : 
Only we want a little personal strength, 
And pause us, till these Rebels now afoot, 
Come underneath the yoke of government. 

War. Both which we doubt not but your majesty 
Shall soon enjoy. 

King. Humphrey, my son of Gloster, 

Where is the prince, your brother ? 

Humph. I think he's gone to hunt, my lord, at 
Windsor. 

King. And how accompanied ? 

Humph. I do not know, my lord. 

King. Is not his brother, Thomas of Clarence, 
with him ? 

Humph. No, my good lord ; he's in presence 
here. 

Clar. What would my lord and father .> 

King. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of 
Clarence. 
How chance thou art not with the prince, thy 

brother? 
He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas. 
Thou hast a better place in his affection 
Than all thy brothers : cherish it, my boy ; 
And noble offices thou mayst effect 
Of mediation, after I am dead, 

Between his greatness and thy other brethren; 

Therefore omit him not ; blunt not his love, 
Nor lose the good advantage of his grace, 
By seeming cold or careless of his will. 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF, 



105 



For he is gracious if he be observed: 
He hath a tear for pit}\ and a hand 
Open as day for melting charity : 
Yet, notwithstanding, being incens'd, he's flint ; 
As humorous * as winter, and as sudden 
As flaws t congealed in the spring of day. 
His temper, therefore, must be well observed : 
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently. 
When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth ; 
But, being moody, give him line and scope, 
Till that his passions, like a whale on ground. 
Confound themselves with working. Learn this, 

Thomas, 
And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends, 
A hoop of gold, to bind thy brothers in: 
That the united vessel of their blood, 
Mingled with venom of suggestion, 
(As force per force, the age will pour it in,) 
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong 
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder. 

Ciar. I shall observe him with all care and love. 

King. Why art thou not at Windsor with him, 
Thomas ? 

Clar. He is not there to-day; he dines in 
London. 

King. And how accompanied ? Canst thou tell 
that ? 



* Capricious." 

t Flaws are the small blades of ice which are struck on the 
edges of water in winter mornings.— ^i/«;ari/j. 



Io6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Clar, With Poins, and other his continual fol- 
lowers. 
King, Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds ; 
And he, the noble image of my youth, 
Is overspread with them. Therefore, my grief 
Stretches itself beyond the hour of death : 
The blood weeps from my heart, when I do shape. 
In forms imaginary, the unguided days. 
And rotten times, that you shall look upon, 
When I am sleeping with my ancestors. 
For when his headstrong riot hath no curb. 
When rage and hot blood are his counsellors. 
When means and lavish manners meet together, 
O ! with what wings shall his affections * fly. 
Towards fronting peril and opposed decay ! 

War. My gracious lord, you look beyond him 
quite : 
The prince but studies his companions^ 
Like a strange tongue ; wherein^ to gain the language^ 
^Tis needful that the most immodest word 
Be looked upon^ and learned ; which, once attained. 
Your highness knows, comes to no further use. 
But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, 
The prince will, in the perfectness of time. 
Cast off his followers ; and their memory 
Shall as a pattern or a measure live 
By which his grace must mete the lives ofothers^ 
Turning past evils to advantages. 

■ * Passions. 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 107 

Could anything be more plain ? Is it 
not evident from what we know of his 
history, that he here shows how he him- 
self " turned past evils to advantages ? " 
how he mixed among men, even of the 
meaner sort, in order to " mete the lives 
of others," and turn his knowledge of 
their language and behavior to advan- 
tage in his art ? Was it not thus that he 
*' held the mirror up to nature ? " Did 
he not indeed make use of their memory 
as " a pattern or a measure " whereby to 
"mete the lives of others?" Thus had 
he turned the evil of his own early life 
to advantage ; thus had he enriched the 
world with the most natural and most 
entertaining characters in literature ; thus 
had he coined his own experience into 
golden lessons of life and conduct for 
all mankind. How could he otherwise 
have learned so much about all classes 
of men ? How could he otherwise have 
acquired such minute and exact knowl- 
edge of the habits, manners, character, 
and language of the lowest as well as 
of the highest people ? His friendship 



log William sbaj^MsPearB 

with Southampton, Montgomery and 
Pembroke served him in no less good 
stead than his friendship with the hum- 
blest people whom he knew. " His 
mind educated itself, not by early study 
or instruction, but by active listening 
and rapid apprehension." 

Let the reader observe how well the 
Earl's account of the Prince's conduct 
agrees with the Bishop's description of 
the manner in which he obtained his 
knowledge : 

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, 
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
Neighbored by fruit of baser quality ; 
And so the Prince obscured his contemplation 
Under the veil of wildness. 

The Prince himself, when he has 
'* turned away his former self," and is no 
longer ** the thing he was," refers to his 
early experiences in the same light. The 
Dauphin having sent him, shortly after 
he had ascended the throne, a set of ten- 
nis-balls, as a derisive fling at his early 
associations, the Prince thus answers 
him : 



POR TRA YED B Y mMSELF. \ Qg 

And we understand him well, 
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days, 
JVot measuritig what use we made of them. 

And the wiser of the French king's 
counsellors, on learning from the ambas- 
sadors the behavior of the English king, 
saw that he was a man not to be meas- 
ured by the indications of his youth : 

Dauphin. For, my good lord, she is so idly 
king'd, 
Her scepter so fantastically borne, 
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, 
That fear attends her not. 

Cofistable. O peace. Prince Dauphin ! 

You are too much mistaken in this king. 
Question your Grace the late ambassadors, — 
With what great state he heard their embassy ; 
How well supplied with noble counsellors ; 
How modest in exception, and withal 
How terrible in constant resolution, — 
And you shall find, his vanities, forespent^ 

Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus^ 
Covering discretion ivith u coat of folly. 

How significant is that phrase, " cover- 
ing discretion with a coat of folly ! " Can 
vve not imagine that Shakespeare, the 
actor as well as author, did this thing? 



1 10 . WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Consider for a moment how the wisest 
man of antiquity acquired his wisdom : 

" I sought in mine heart to give myself unto 
wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom ; and 
to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that 
good for the sons of men which they should do un- 
der the heaven all the days of their life. 

" I made me great works ; I builded me houses; 
I planted me vineyards ; I made me gardens a,nd 
orchards ; and I planted trees in them of all kinds 
of fruits : 

" I made me pools of water, to water therewith 
the wood that bringeth forth trees : 

" I got me servants and maidens [concubines], 
and had servants born in my house : 

" I gathered me also silver and gold, and the pe- 
culiar treasure of kings, and of the provinces ; I got 
me men-singers and women-singers, and the de- 
lights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, 
and these of all sorts : 

" So I was great, and increased more than all that 
were before me in Jerusalem : also my wisdom re- 
mained with me. 

" And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not 
from them ; I withheld not my heart from any joy ; 
for my heart rejoiced in all my labor : and this was 
my portion of all my labor. 

" Then I looked on all the works that my hands 
had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored 



FOR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. i j i 

to do : and behold, all was vanity and vexation of 
spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. 

" Then I turned myself to behold wisdom, and 
madness, and folly : 

" And I saw that wisdom excelleth folly as far 
as light excelleth darkness." 

All which strongly exemplifies the 
truth which I have already shown, that it 
is not books, nor classical studies, that 
make men great poets and great novel- 
ists, but actual experimental knowledge. 

I do not mean by all this to infer that 
a young man should, to become ac- 
quainted with the world and acquire wis- 
dom, cultivate the acquaintance of lewd 
and wicked people, and do wicked things. 
God forbid ! but when he has become a 
man, and has attained some firmness of 
character, it will not be amiss for him to 
mix among people of all classes with the 
view of becoming personally acquainted 
with their character. There is nothing 
like experimental knowledge, especially 
for the purposes of art. Outside of this, 
nothing will help him so much as the 
plays of Shakespeare, who seems to havQ 



1 1 2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

known men and women better than any 
other human being that ever lived. 

'' Most subject are the fattest soils to 
weeds." What fat soils and what weeds 
were found in many of the most distin- 
guished men in history ! Need I men- 
tion, for instance, Caesar, Antony, Alex- 
ander, St. Augustine, Marlowe, Steele, 
Mirabeau, Rousseau and Fox ? A whole 
catalogue of such men might be made 
out. If ever there was a fat soil, it was 
that of Shakespeare, and we know from 
his Sonnets, and from various other 
sources, that the weeds were not lacking. 

M. Taine, who, like so many others, 
discovers Shakespeare in Hamlet, finds 
most of the materials of his life in the 
Sonnets. Hamlet may indeed be Shake- 
speare in some part of his life ; in those 
days when he was most ** sicklied o'er 
with the pale cast of thought ;" when the 
origin of things and the mystery of exist- 
ence occupied his mind in an uncommon 
degree ; and when, as some suppose, he 
had suffered some terrible stroke of fate ; 
— but the Shakespeare of the Sonnets 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF, 



113 



belongs to the earlier period, to that part 
of his life in which he was beginning to 
tear himself away from the Siren circle 
that seems to have held him fast so 
long, and when he was turning toward 
nobler and greater things : 

Alas ! 'tis true ; I have gone here and there 
And made myself a motley to the view ; 
Gored mine own thoughts ; 
Sold cheap what is most dear. 

O for my sake, do thou with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 

That did not better for my life provide, 

Than public means, which public manners 
breeds. 

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 
Pity me then 

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
Potions of eysel. 

These lines look, indeed, as Mr. Arm- 
itage Brown thinks, as if they were ad- 
dressed to one of his noble friends, per- 
haps the Earl of Southampton, lamenting 

the unhappy associations and unfavor- 
8 



114 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



able reputation of the stage ; and it is 
clear that, mixing in this high and noble 
society, he felt a stigma cast on his name 
as an actor. During all his life, and 
through all his works, he entertained a 
high respect for the nobility, and finally 
endeavored to become one of them him- 
self. 

The following passage is of the same 
tenor, sorrowing over the disgraceful and 
outcast state of his profession in men's 
eyes, and sighing to be " like one more 
rich in hope ; " but still displaying the 
mental agonies of one who was strug- 
gling toward better things : 

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, 

I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries ; 

And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope. 

Featured like him, like him with friends pos- 
sessed .... 
With what I most enjoy contented least ; 

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising. 

Sonnet 91. 

Does not this look like inward disgust 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 1 1 1 

at vulgar and low associations, and re- 
morse for the part he had played among 
low and inferior people ? 

It is evident that his associations with 
the nobility had cast a fascination over 
him, and he wished he were one of them ; 
a wish which, as we shall see, never en- 
tirely left him. Let any young man who 
has had to work hard for a living, who 
has experienced all the ills of poverty 
and severe toil, suddenly find himself on 
an honorable footing among refined and 
noble people, surrounded with all the 
elegances of wealth, culture, and ease, 
with ample time and means for study, 
and he too, however philosophic in 
character, will wish himself ''like one 
more rich in hope, featured like him, like 
him with friends possessed." After the 
very hardest kind of experience in his 
youth, the writer suddenly found himself, 
at twenty-five, a teacher of languages in 
an aristocratic school in Germany, sur- 
rounded by people of refinement and cul- 
ture, and with a handsome salary for giv- 
ing a few lessons a day in his native 



il6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tongue. How keenly he appreciated the 
change and how much he envied those 
whose youth was so much more favored 
than his own ! He would wilHngly, had 
circumstances permitted, have passed his 
life in this delightful situation. 

The first lines in the last quotation 
seem obviously to refer to that early 
period in which Shakespeare travelled 
with his company from town to town, 
making himself '' a motley to the view." 
No doubt he had served a severe and bit- 
ter apprenticeship in the hard-faring and 
soul-trying profession of the actor ; he 
had endured the scoffs and jeers of those 
who derided his calling, and was prob- 
ably severely criticised by people who 
knew nothing of his art, and who little 
suspected that this young actor was to 
become the regenerator and ornament of 
the English stage and of English litera- 
ture. Might not that line, 

"With what I most enjoy, contented least," 

refer to the fact, that although he loved 
the drama, he was ill-content with the 



PORTRA YEb B Y HI MSB LP. 



117 



parts he had to play, with the dramas in 
which he played, and with the people be- 
fore whom or with whom he played ? * 

Oh that some Boswell, some scribbling 
gossip who knew the man, had only put 
down what he knew of him ! Oh that 
Burbage or Ben Jonson had only told us 



* Among the disputations for degrees at Oxford, in 1 593, 
one was on the question, " Are players infamous ? " And it 
seems they were decided to be so. (Clark's Register of the 
University.) Whether the players were infamous or not, these 
Oxfordians certainly made themselves so, by coming to such 
a decision. How could a great dramatic Poet come out of 
such a crowd } 

Such, however, was, among certain classes, the sentiment of 
the age. Even in the Poet's own town of Stratford, the Cor- 
poration took stringent measures, in 1602 and 161 1, to prevent 
the performance of plays therein. There reigned then cer- 
tainly a mayor who " knew not Joseph." M. Taine tells us, 
the actor's profession was at that time " degraded by the bru- 
talities of the crowd, — ^who not seldom would stone the actors, 
— and by the severities of the magistrates, who would some- 
times condemn them to lose their ears." 

Some of my younger readers may wonder why the players 
of that day are always spoken of as " his Majesty's servants," 
or as " the Lord So-and-So's servants." Why, if they could 
not get some protection, as the servants of some great man, 
they would be arrested and imprisoned as vagrants ! 

These are the things that show us what the " good old times " 
were. Is it any wonder that the learned folk did not think it 
worth while to take any notice of a " mere player " and play- 
wright ? They were beneath notice. 



something of his early struggles, his dis=- 
appointments, his defeats, and his sug^ 
cesses! If some diarist of that day, 
some Pepys or Evelyn, had only noted 
his sayings and doings, how much his 
notes would have been prized ! Little 
did they imagine who knew the man, and 
who wrote voluminously of the king and 
his courtiers, that they overlooked the 
real king of men, the most princely soul 
of that or any age, and wrote only of his 
satellites! Not that we need a Boswell 
to tell us what manner of man Shake- 
speare was ; not that we need any such 
intimate revealings as Boswell gave of 
Johnson in order to understand his char- 
acter ; — but to settle the idle talk of those 
silly dreamers who, unable to discover 
the man in his works, are bent upon hav- 
ing all the details of his private life, if 
not in his own life, at least in those of 
another. You may start any doctrine 
Or proposition you please ; you may an- 
nounce yourself the apostle of the most 
absolute rhodomontade that ever entered 



JPOR TkA VED B Y tilMSEL^, i j^ 

the human brain ; and if you only scream 
long and loud enough, you will find a 
host of followers and believers. In every 
age and in every country there is a class 
of crotchety, cranky people, who are so 
eaeer for novelties and oddities, that 
they will swallow anything that tickles 
the palate and ministers to a diseased 
appetite. 

How often have I regretted that, in 
those instances where the Poet's name 
was mentioned by one of his contem- 
poraries, something was not said of 
his looks, his manner, or his character! 
Here is one of them. Most of the great 
commentators on Shakespeare's plays 
have contended that, from internal evi- 
dence. Measure for Meastire must have 
been composed between 1609 and 161 2; 
but it is now known that it was played 
before James the First, at Somerset 
House, in 1604. For this knowledge we 
ar^e indebted to Mr. Tylney, who was 
Master of the Revels at this time, and 
;who, in his account of the expenses for 



I ^o tViLLlAM SHAKESPEARE 

this year, has this entry : ** By His Maj- 
esty's Players: on St. Stephen's nighty 
in the Hall, a play called ' Measure for 
Measure,' by Mr. Shaxberd." 

What a chance Tylney lost for grate- 
ful immortality ! The mere mention of 
the name of the playwright, whose name 
he could not spell, has preserved his for 
three hundred years, and will probably 
preserve it for many hundred more. But 
what a precious thing he would have con- 
ferred on us had "he taken the trouble to 
make the acquaintance of " Mr. Shax- 
berd," and noted his ways and sayings, 
or said something interesting of him, 
along with this item ! How much we 
would have been indebted to him if he 
had only written as much as I have 
written here, on this page, about this 
humble playwright, whose name he knew 
not how to spell ! O young man, do not 
fail, when you come in contact with 
genius, to use your eyes and ears well, 
and to make some record of what you 
have seen and heard ; for you may thus 



jPOR TkA YED B Y HlMSELF. t2l 

not only confer a boon on posterity, 
but a pleasing immortality on yourself ! 
Who would not like to have his name 
linked in immortal, association with that 
of the gentle Shakespeare, the sweet 
bard of Avon ! 



i22 William shakesJpearE 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE INCIDENTS OF SHAKESPEARE's LIFE-— 
HIS CONVERSATION HIS WORKS. 

THE Stray notices of Shakespeare 
found here and there in the writers 
of his time, showing when he probably 
wrote such a play, when he stopped at 
such a place or played such a character, 
when he had so many shares in the thea- 
ter, or bought such a piece of land, have 
very little to do in exhibiting to us the 
man Shakespeare, the poet whose works 
we read with so much admiration. It is 
the conversation, the thoughts, feelings, 
hopes and fears, aims and objects of a 
man that show us what he is ; and the 
known incidents of Shakespeare's life 
show us few, if any, of these things. We 
know little of the man except what we 
find in his writings. But he is not so pe- 
culiar in this respect as many imagine. 



POR TRA YED B V ///A/SELF. 123 

*' The great dramatist," says Mr. Halll- 
well-Phillipps, " participates in the fate of 
most of his Hterary contemporaries ; for if 
a collection of the known facts relating 
to all of them were tabularly arranged, it 
would be found that the number of the 
ascertained particulars of his life reached 
at least the average." What do the de- 
tails which we have of Missinger's life 
show us of the man who wrote A New 
Way to pay Old Debts f What do the few 
unhappy stories of Otway's career show 
us of the man who wrote Venice Pre- 
served? What do these things show us 
of the daily life and conversation of these 
men ? The men who wrote these plays 
were quite different men from those who 
are described as having eaten at such a 
place, drunk at such another, and starved 
at such another. The man of genius is, 
in the composition of his works, and in 
the best moments of his social life, a 
burning torch, shedding light on all 
around, an inspired prophet and preacher, 
bringrine forth, with radiant feature and 
beaming eye, things new and old for the 



124 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

edification and delectation of mankind. 
And when his work is done, and he 
engages in the ordinary affairs of Hfe, he 
becomes again a common mortal, think- 
ing, speaking, acting, eating and drink- 
ing like any other common mortal. The 
men we see in the biographies are often 
poor wretched creatures, seeking or suing 
for bread among people who did not un- 
derstand or appreciate them, and display- 
ing nothing to identify them with their 
writings. For it is notorious that men 
of letters have generally been lacking 
in that worldly wisdom which amasses 
wealth, and have frequently been obliged 
to submit to the most galling humilia- 
tions to receive the means of subsistence. 
" I saw so many men of letters poor and 
despised," says the wise Voltaire, '' that I 
made up my mind that I would not add 
to their number;" and I am inclined to 
think the wise Shakespeare made the 
same resolution. 

What man of any culture has not his 
moments of luminous thought, of rare 
conceptions and bright imaginings, when 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



125 



conversation flows like water, and the 
world seems lit up with celestial light ? 
These are not the moments for ordinary 
acquaintance ; but for that genial, inti- 
mate fellowship, when noble souls com- 
mune with each other, and appreciation 
kindles inspiration. Then the man ex- 
hibits himself, his soul, his nature ; and 
it is in such moments that he does his 
best literary work, and incarnates his 
thoughts in a work of art. For a man in 
his best mood is as different from himself 
in his ordinary mood as steel is different 
from iron. I once heard a gentleman 
say, concerning an author whose writings 
he greatly admired, that he did not care 
to make his personal acquaintance, for 
he was sure this would simply disenchant 
him: "A man of genius," said he, ''is 
seldom equal to himself in his best liter- 
ary work, and his conversation would 
therefore fall so far short of his writings, 
that I should be sure to be disenchanted." 
*' If you have a hero," says George Eliot, 
" do not make a journey to visit him." 
This, however, Is not always the case. 



126 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Some men of genius are greater in their 
conversation than in their printed works. 
This was the case with Dr. Johnson and 
with the poet Burns. The former Hves 
now ahnost solely in Boswell's account 
of his talk, and Burns is reported, by 
those who knew him, as far more brilliant 
in his conversation than in his poetry. 
One noble lady declared that Burns was 
the only man whose talk took her com- 
pletely off her feet. From the few no- 
tices that have come down to us of 
Shakespeare, we judge he must have 
been such a man ; fully as delightful in 
his conversation as in his v/ritings, de- 
lighting those who talked with him as 
much as those who read him. The lines 
which first suggested this essay may ena- 
ble us to form some idea of its brilliancy. 
Probably his conversation has never been 
surpassed by that of any man who talked 
with his friends. Wit and brilliancy of 
talent were so common in his day, that 
the conversation even of Shakespeare 
was not noted as anything extraordinary. 
Yet b^ is reported by several to havQ 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 1 27 

been excellent company, " with a very- 
ready and pleasant, smooth wit;" and 
there is little doubt that he was the head 
and front of that brilliant company who 
used to assemble at the Mermaid Tav- 
ern, whose meetings are so strikingly 
described by Francis Beaumont, the com- 
mon friend of both Jonson and Shake- 
speare : 

" What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whom they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. There, where there hath been 

thrown 
Wit and mirth enough to justify the town 
For three days past ; wit, that might warrant be 
For the whole city to talk foolishly 
Till that were cancelled ; and, when that was gone, 
We left an air behind us which alone 
Was able to make the next two companies 
Right witty." 

Now let the reader glance for a mo- 
ment, once ' again, at the Archbishop's 
account of the Prince's talk, and judge 



1 28 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

whether it is not that of Shakespeare 
himself: 

Hear him but reason in divinity, 

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish, 

You would desire the king were made a prelate : 

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 

You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study : 

List .his discourse of war, and you shall hear 

A fearful battle rendered you in music : 

Turn him to any course of policy, 

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose. 

Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks. 

The air, a chartered libertine, is still. 

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears 

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences. 

Fuller, who was almost a contemporary 
of Shakespeare (born like Milton, in 
1608, eight years before Shakespeare's 
death), makes an interesting reference to 
these Mermaid conferences, at which Sir 
Walter Raleigh is said to have been one 
of the participants : " Many were the wit- 
combats between Shakespeare and Ben 
Jonson, which two I behold like a Span- 
ish great galleon and an English man-of- 
war. Master Jonson, like the former, 
was built far higher in learning; solid, 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



129 



but slow in his performances. Shake- 
speare, like the English man-of-war, lesser 
in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn 
with all tides, tack about, and take ad- 
vantage of all winds by the quickness of 
his wit and invention." Could there be 
any better description of the Prince's 
encounters with Falstaff ? Was not the 
Prince the llcrht Encrlish man-of-war as 
compared with the Spanish great galleon 
Falstaff ? Of course, Falstaff is made 
the wittier of the two ; but the wit of 
both is the product of one brain, and the 
exigencies of the drama required that the 
fat knight should be made droller and 
more amusing than the Prince; for he 
had to "brlnor the house down" oftener 
than the Prince, whose dignity would be 
compromised by too much of this sort of 
thing. The latter, however, held his 
own throughout, and was always a foe- 
man worthy of his steel. 

If any one, therefore, wishes to enjoy 
Shakespeare's conversations, to taste what 
they were like, he must not seek them in , 
his biography, nor in the biographies of 



ISO 



WlLLrAM SfiAJtESPEAkE 



Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher; 
he must not seek them in any of the me- 
moirs of his time ; for in none of these 
are they to be found; — no, he must 
seek them in his writings ; in the First 
and Second Part of Henry IV, he will 
find them in all their freshness. The 
Poet is there, with all his spirit, life, wit 
and philosophy; Ben Jonson is there, 
with all his sense, humor, and raillery ; 
Southampton, Pembroke, and the wise 
counsellors of the reign of Elizabeth are 
there, with all their wise and dignified 
speeches; the hostess and divers of the 
frequenters of the Mermaid Tavern are 
there, with all their quips, cranks and 
quiddities. Nor is it in the pages of the 
historians, Hume, Lingard, or Macaulay, 
that he will find the personal character 
and conversation of the rulers of that 
day ; but in the living pages of Shake- 
speare, which present not only the spirit, 
but the flesh and blood of the men of 
the time ; their life and conversation in 
those moments when they displayed their 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF, 



131 



inward selves, and showed what they 
really were. 

There were no reporters, diarists, In- 
terviewers in Shakespeare's time ; and 
very few thought it worth while to put 
down in black and white anything but 
great political events and the movements 
of royal personages. The art of familiar 
correspondence was unknown. In fact, 
the composition of a letter was, at that 
time, about as formal and deliberate a 
piece of business as writing a contract is 
to-day ; for there was not merely the 
writing of the letter, but the folding, 
sealing, addressing, and transmitting, 
which were all much more difficult than 
they are at the present time, requiring 
taste, training and means possessed by 
few. This is why there are so few let- 
ters extant from that day, and why we 
know so little of the private lives of the 
great men of the time. 

When the great dramas of Shake- 
speare were coming out, hardly anybody 
thought it worth while to make any 
written mention of them ; hardly a soul 



1 3 2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Spoke of them In a letter to a friend. 
Now the production of a new play or an 
opera is telegraphed over the world ; the 
correspondent of every newspaper gives 
an account of it ; and the whole history 
of its author is set down the next day in 
the newspapers. Not only do we learn 
all about the play or the opera, but the 
habits of its author ; what he eats, drinks, 
and wears ; who are his friends ; what 
he says, and what books he reads. In 
Shakespeare's day, a man could be 
eminent in his profession without being 
made a show of. Men whose deeds have 
since been trumpeted over the world 
lived and died without any impertinent 
inquiries being made into their private 
lives. Greatness was so common that 
nobody thought it worth while to note 
with pen and Ink the doings and sayings 
of ''a mere player;" and he was too great 
a man to do it himself. He was not of 
the memoir-writing kind ; nor did any of 
his friends think him of sufficient impor- 
tance to write a memoir of him, or even 
to make any Inquiry Into his life. Fame 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF, 



m 



he seems to have regarded with abso- 
lute indifference ; for even his best works 
might have perished for all the care he 
took of them. The last infirmity of noble 
minds was not his. We are not sure that 
a single play of his was published with 
his consent in his lifetime. What was 
Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? He 
knew that, after his death, even if the 
whole world talked of him, he would 
probably be as unconscious of it as the 
stone that rested on his grave.* 

As Victor Hugo observes, he came near 
meeting the fate of ^schylus, whose 
works were burned in the Alexandrian 
Library. "Shakespeare also had his 
conflagration," says Hugo. "He was so 

* This extreme modesty of Shakespeare is the basis of one 
of the charges against him ; for Mr. Donnelly maintains, I 
believe, that he never claimed the plays as his at all. What ! 
did all the various quarto editions of his plays, published un- 
der his name in his lifetime, and never questioned as other 
than his, nor ever disowned by him, form no claim ? How is 
an author's claim then to be made out? Did the united tes- 
timony of his contemporaries, and of all subsequent genera- 
tions, form no claim ? If so, then no man may lay claim to 
anything that he possesses, literary or otherwise, except it be 
duly registered and filed under his name, with affidavits and 
vouchers, as his personal property: 



134 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



little printed, printing existing so little 
for him, thanks to the stupid indifference 
of his immediate posterity, that in 1666 
there was still but one edition of the 
poet of Stratford-on-Avon (Hemynge 
and Condell's edition), three hundred 
copies of which were printed. Shake- 
speare, with this obscure and pitiful edi- 
tion awaiting the public in vain, was a 
sort of poor but proud relative of the 
glorious poets. These three hundred 
copies were nearly all stored up in Lon- 
don when the Fire of 1666 broke out. 
It burned London, and nearly burned 
Shakespeare. The whole edition of 
Hemynge and Condell disappeared, with 
the exception of the forty-eight copies 
which had been sold in fifty years. 
Those forty-eight purchasers saved the 
works of Shakespeare ! " 

Forty-eight copies In fifty years ! O 
disheartened and despondent poet ! how 
canst thou grumble when the immortal 
Shakespeare was so little appreciated ! 
Poetry is food for the gods, of whom 
there are few in any country. To Hem- 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



135 



ynge and Condell, who saved Shake- 
speare from the fate of ^schylus, and 
who have been so roughly and unthank- 
fully treated by some critics, statues will 
yet be erected. 

Victor Hugo is, however, as he often 
is when speaking of English affairs, 
not exactly correct in his statement of 
facts ; for there were two other editions 
printed before 1666, one in 1632 and an- 
other in 1663 ; but his inferences are 
practically correct nevertheless. But for 
Hemynge and Condell's First Folio, we 
should, according to Halliwell-Phillipps, 
never have heard of such masterpieces 
as the Tempest^ Macbeth, Twelfth Nighty 
Measure for Measure, CoriolanuSy Julius 
CcBsar, Timon of Athens, Antony and 
Cleopatra, Cymbeline, As You Like It, 
and Winter s Tale. How easily might 
these plays have been burnt ! and how 
much we are indebted to these two 
friends and fellow-actors of Shakespeare 
for preserving them by print ! O Guten- 
berg ! how much we owe to thee for 
thy divine invention, the art preserva- 



13^ 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



tlve of arts, the savior of the works of 
genius ! Print paralyzes the arm of the 
tyrant, and renders the works of genius 
indestructible. Nevermore shall a Nero 
or an Omar have any power over such 
works ; nevermore shall genius be either 
the suppliant or the victim of poten- 
tates and princes. Print puts them be- 
yond the power of any human being to 
destroy them.* 

And now, because the details of his 
life are wanting, because we do not know 
the names of his teachers, the cut of his 
clothes, the color of his eyes, the price 
of his dinner, or the amount of his salary, 
the triflers and cranks, the gadders after 
personalities and novelties, the seekers 
after signs and wonders, the worshippers 
of rank and classic culture, the people 
who are too dull to see the man in his 
writings, and who cannot conceive of a 
man being cultivated and refined without 

* Curiously enough, of these three hundred copies of the 
First Folio, thirteen are, according to Mr. Fleming, in the pos- 
session of New Yorkers, which speaks volumes for the taste 
and appreciation of the Empire City. See Shakesjbeariqn^iQX 
March, 1888, 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



137 



university polish, are trying to rob him of 
his fair name and fame, and to add both 
to those of another, already full of hon- 
ors for work of an entirely different kind, 
and famous as lawyer, legislator, philos- 
opher, and essayist ! 

" For now the Poet cannot die 
Nor leave his music as of old ; 
But round him ere he scarce be cold 
Begins the scandal and the cry : 

" * Proclaim the faults he would not show : 
Break lock and seal : betray the trust : 
Keep nothing sacred ; 'tis but just 
The many-headed Beast should know ! ' 

" Ah, shameless ! for he did but sing 

A song that pleased us from its worth ; 
No public life was his on earth ; 
No blazoned statesman he, nor king. 

" He gave the people of his best ; 

His worst he kept ; his best he gave. 
My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave 
Who will not let his ashes rest ! " 

It is worthy of notice, that the really 
great men of literature, those who appre- 
ciated Shakespeare most highly and crit- 
icised his works most ably, never for 



138 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



a moment questioned his right to what 
went under his name, never once imagined 
that because he was little noticed and less 
written about in his day, he was not the 
author of the immortal dramas. If any 
man knew the advantages of a classic 
education, surely that man was Coleridge. 
With what scorn he would have regarded 
the attempt to foist the works of Shake- 
speare on Lord Bacon ! Not only Cole- 
ridge, but Hazlitt, Goethe, Gervinus, and 
the rest would have regarded it with 
derision. As for Miss Delia Bacon's 
book on Shakespeare, — the book that first 
started the whole foolish controversy, — 
it is simply learning gone mad, the most 
far-fetched and cranky thing ever penned. 
Buzfuz's *' chops and tomato-sauce " is 
nothing to it ; Swift's plan for extract- 
ing sunbeams from cucumbers is sensible 
compared with it ; Macpherson's claims 
for Ossian are reasonable and probable 
compared with it. Nothing out of Bed- 
lam can equal the astounding deductions 
she makes from his plays. The most 
crazy religious enthusiast never inter- 



POR TkA YED B Y tJlMSELP, \ 3^ 

preted passages in the Scriptures in a 
more extraordinary manner than Miss 
DeHa Bacon interpreted passages in Ba- 
con's works and Shakespeare's plays.* 

* I did not know, when I wrote this, that this unhappy lady, 
Miss Delia Bacon, ended her career in an insane asylum. 
Had I been aware of this fact, I should not, perhaps, have 
used such strong language. Some Baconians assert, that the 
severe criticisms on her book, and the ridicule heaped upon 
her by all classes, were the cause of her malady ; but the truth 
is, judging from her work, she must have been predisposed to 
insanity ; for I never, in my whole life, read a book that 
looked so little like anything reasonable or sensible. 



UO WiLLlAM SHAKESP^ARR 



CHAPTER X. 

THE KNOWN TRAITS OF SHAKESPEARE COM- 
PARED WITH THOSE OF THE PRINCE. 

THOUGH the Prince's character 
may be seen in almost every scene 
of the play, its real dignity and inner 
beauty come out more strongly in the 
interviews between himself and his father 
than in any other. Here he shows him- 
self in his true colors as an honest, loving 
son, a faithful subject, and a patriotic 
prince. *' Frank, liberal, prudent, gentle, 
yet brave as Hotspur himself," says Mr. 
Knight, *' the Prince shows that even in 
his wildest excesses he has drunk deeply 
of the fountains of truth and wisdom. 
The wisdom of the king is that of a cold 
and subtle politician ; — Hotspur seems 
to stand out from his followers as the 
haughty feudal lord, too proud to have 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. i^ \ 

listened to any teacher but his own will ; 
— but the Prince, in casting away the 
dignity of his station to commune freely 
with his fellow-men, has attained that 
strength which is above all conventional 
power ; his virtues as well as his frailties 
belong to our common humanity ; the 
virtues capable, therefore, of the highest 
elevation, and the frailties not pampered 
into crimes by the artificial incentives of 
social position." 

Although he is a soldier, and brave as 
brave can be, he is represented as loving 
peace and hating bloodshed : '' I am not 
yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the 
North," he says ; " he that kills me some 
six or seven dozen Scots at a breakfast, 
washes his hands, and says to his wife, 
^ Fie upon this quiet life ! I want work.' " 
Oh no ; he prefers intellectual combats 
to physical ones, the play of spiritual 
weapons to material ones ; he prefers 
wine, wit, and wisdom to the clash of arms 
and the roar of cannon ; genial, social in- 
tercourse, with witty sallies and lively 
repartees, to the mustering of troops and 



142 



WILLIAM SHAl^ESPEARR 



the din of battle. Is not this the Shake- 
speare described by his contemporaries ? 
Is not this the Shakespeare that we know 
from all accounts? Even when he be- 
comes king, and is urged by the lords 
spiritual to make war on France, see with 
what anxiety he counts the cost, with 
what solicitude he looks to the miseries 
it will entail : 

We charge you, in the name of God, take heed ; 
For never two such kingdoms did contend 
Without much fall of blood ; whose guiltless drops 
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint, 
'Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords 
That make such waste in brief mortality. 

" Brief mortality," indeed ! he felt that 
life was all too short without having 
it curtailed by violence. His hatred of 
bloodshed was exhibited, indeed, long 
before he became king. To prevent the 
fratricidal slaughter of his countrymen in 
battle, he thus offers to fight in single 
combat the most renowned warrior of his 
day : 

Prince. In both our armies there is many a soul 
Shall pay full dearly for this encounter, 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. j ^^3 

If once they join in trial. Tell your nephew 

The prince of Wales doth join with all the world 

In praise of Henry Percy. By my hopes, 

This present enterprise set off his head, 

I do not think a braver gentleman, 

More active-valiant, or more valiant-young. 

More daring, or more bold, is now alive 

To grace this latter age with noble deeds. 

For my part, I may speak it to my shame, 

I have a truant been to chivalry, 

And so I hear he doth account me too ; 

Yet this before my father's majesty: 

I am content, that he shall take the odds 

Of his great name and estimation, 

And will, to save the blood on either side. 

Try fortune with him in a single fight. 

And when Hotspur, hearing of the 
challenge, asks, 

How showed his tasking ? seemed it in contempt } 

Sir Richard Vernon replies thus beauti- 
fully : 

No, by my soul : I never in my life 

Did hear a challenge urged more modestly, 

Unless a brother should a brother dare 

To gentle exercise and proof of arms. 

He gave you all the duties of a man. 

Trimmed up your praises with a princely tongue, 

Spoke your deservings like a chronicle, 



144 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Making you ever better than his praise, 

By still dispraising praise, valued with you ; 

And, which became him like a prince indeed, 

He made a blushing cital of himself ; 

And chid his truant youth with such a grace, 

As if he mastered there a double spirit. 

Of teaching, and of learning, instantly. 

There did he pause : but let me tell the world, 

If he outlive the envy of this day, 

England did never owe so sweet a hope. 

So much misconstrued in his wantonness. 

The modesty of Shakespeare is prover- 
bial ; he never speaks of himself directly ; 
he never advances any views that we 
know to be his own individually ; all 
these things are foreign to his nature. 
But here, in disguise, he freely and 
truly paints himself, justly imagining 
the Prince to be such a man as he was, 
and justly and without any other desire 
than painting a true character, following 
the highest instincts of his nature. Con- 
sider, therefore, how near these lines 
touch him : 

He made a blushing cital of himself; 
And chid his truant youth with such a grace, 
As if he mastered there a double spirit, 
Of teaching, and of learning, instantly. 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



145 



'' A blushing cital of himself," and " a 
double spirit of teaching and of learning ! " 
Could anything be more like the Poet ? 
Is it not largely on account of his modest 
nature that we know so little of him ? 
Can we not conceive that his conversation 
was of this teaching and learning char- 
acter ? Who ever learned and who ever 
taught as he did? His talks with his 
friends and companions would surely have 
been of such a character. And then how 
true to the letter did he make these lines : 

Let me tell the world, 
If he outlive the envy of this day, 
England did never owe so sweet a hope, 
So much misconstrued in his wantonness. 

To partake in an encounter of wits, to 
cross intellectual swords with a foeman 
worthy of his steel, the Prince was will- 
ing to go extraordinary lengths ; and 
who will deny that Shakespeare, to enjoy 
an uncommon intellectual treat, would 
be willing to have a tete-a-t6te with the 
devil himself ? Hence the extraordinary 
companions the Prince draws around 
him ; hence the extraordinary situations 

10 



146 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he gets into for a prince. When he re- 
solves to appear before Falstaff and his 
mistress as a drawer or pot-boy, he ex- 
claims : ''From a prince to a 'prentice ! 
a low transformation ! That shall be 
mine ; for in everything the purpose must 
weigh with the folly! " Witness his ex- 
traordinary delight at the wit of Falstaff s 
page, and his immediate reward of him 
therefor : 

Foins By the mass, here comes Bar- 

dolph. 

Prince. And the boy that I gave Falstaff : he 
had him from me Christian ; and look, if the fat 
villain have not transformed him ape ! 
Enter Bardolph and Page. 

Bard. God save your grace ! 

Prince. And yours, most noble Bardolph. 

Bard. [To the Page.] Come, you virtuous ass, 
you bashful fool, must you be blushing ? wherefore 
blush you now ? 

Page. He called me even now, my lord, through 
a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his 
face from the window ; at last I spied his eyes ; and 
methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife's 
new red petticoat, and peeped through ! 

Prince. Hath not the boy profited ? 

Bard. Away, you upright rabbit, away ! 



PORTRAYED BY HTMSELF. 



14; 



Page. Aw2Ly, you rascally Althea's dream, away ! 

Prince. Instruct us, boy ; what dream, boy ? 

Page. Marry, my lord, Althea dreamt she was 
delivered of a firebrand ; and therefore I call him 
her dream. \Bardolph had a very red nose.] 

Prince. A crown's worth of good interpretation. 
— There it is, boy. \Gives him mo7tey. 

Poins. O, that this good blossom could be kept 
from cankers ! — Well, there is sixpence to preserve 
thee. 

Would not Shakespeare be just the 
man to reward the witty gamin for a 
stroke of this kind ? 

There is one other sentence of the 
Prince's, uttered just before the merry 
meeting, and after his practical joke 
with Francis, which has always seemed 
to me marvellously significant. Most 
writers, when they will give a picture of 
the poet, quote the famous lines : 

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling. 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 
heaven : etc. 

But, to my thinking, these words addressed 
by the Prince to Poins give a far truer 
picture of such a character : '' I am now 
of all humors, that have showed them- 



148 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

selves humors, since the old days of 
goodman Adam, to the pupil age of 
this present twelve o'clock at midnight." 
Of all humors ! Truly, the very pic- 
ture of poets. Of how many poets do we 
not know this to have been precisely the 
character? Is not the history of Cole- 
ridge, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Poe, and 
the rest a history of men ** of all humors," 
'' of jars all compact," guilty of such ex- 
travagant freaks that men of common- 
sense have usually set them down as un- 
canny? Sometimes guilty of the most 
fantastic tricks and wild extravagances ; 
sometimes down in the deepest depths 
of melancholy ; sometimes up in the 
highest heights of heaven ; sometimes 
all that is holy and devout ; sometimes 
all that is wicked and devilish, — they go 
beyond the bounds observed by other 
men. Turn to the history of almost any 
of our modern English poets, and you 
shall find them to have been " of all 
humors, that have showed themselves 
humors, since the old days of goodman 
Adam." And Shakespeare, though wise 



POk TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 14^ 

and prudent beyond most poets, was not 
different from them in this respect. We 
know that he had his humors, his freaks, 
his practical jokes, his wild youthful es- 
capades, and that his very death was 
caused by a merry meeting among 
old friends and fellow-poets. Yet he is 
known for such gentleness of disposition 
and such kindness of manner that Mat- 
thew Arnold's description of Shelley's 
character might stand for that of our 
Poet : " A man of marvellous gentleness, 
of feminine refinement, with gracious and 
considerate manner, ' a perfect gentle- 
man,* entirely without arrogance or ag- 
gressive egotism, completely devoid of 
the proverbial and ferocious vanity of 
authors and poets, always disposed to 
make little of his own work and to pre- 
fer that of others, of reverent enthusiasm 
for the great and wise, of high and ten- 
der seriousness, of heroic generosity, and 
of a delicacy in rendering services which 
was equal to his generosity." Who will 
say that these words might not be ap- 



1 50 iVTLLlAM SMaKeSPEARE 

plied to the great dramatist, or to his 
image, the Prince ? 

But the Prince was a soldier. Well, 
so were many eminent poets and philoso- 
phers ; so were ^Eschylus, Socrates, Cer- 
vantes, and Ben Jonson ; — and I have 
not a doubt that Shakespeare could, had 
he been so minded, have distinguished 
himself in the field as he did elsewhere ; 
for, like these his great predecessors and 
contemporaries, he was as heroic in 
character as he was noble and grand in 
thought. Although philosopher enough 
to *' daff the world aside and bid it pass," 
he could, when required, have matched 
with the bravest or the ablest in the field. 
If we follow the Prince through his cam- 
paigns as king, we find high thoughts 
and brave actions going hand in hand ; 
and had the Poet been actually king, we 
may be sure the one would have accom- 
panied the other as the night the day. 
What actual king ever thought so highly, 
spoke so eloquently, acted so nobly, or 
fought so heroically as did Shakespeare's 
Henry the Fifth ? Consider for a mo- 



POk TkA VEt) B V mMSELR t - j 

ment one of his speeches to his army, 
and tell me if the man Shakespeare 
might not have spoken thus : 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once 

more ; 
Or close the wall up with our English dead ! 
In peace ^ there's nothing so becomes a man^ 
As modest stillness and humility ; 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger : 
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, 
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage : 
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 
Let it pry through the portage of the head, 
Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'erwhelm it 
As fearfully as doth a galled rock 
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. 
Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide ; 
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
To his full height ! — On, on, you noblest English ! 
Whose blood is fetched from fathers of war-proof ! 
Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders, 
Have. in these parts from morn till even fought, 
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument. 
Dishonor not your mothers : now attest. 
That those whom you called fathers did beget you. 
Be copy now to men of grosser blood. 
And teach them how to war. — And you, good yeo- 
men, 



152 



WILLIAM SHAkESPkARk 



Whose limbs were made in England, show us here 

The mettle of your pasture : let us swear 

That you are worth your breeding ; which I doubt 

not, 
For there is none of you so mean and base, 
That hath not noble luster in your eyes. 
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, 
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot : 
Follow your spirit ; and, upon this charge. 
Cry — God for Harry ! England ! and St. George 1 

Although a good soldier and brave 
man, the Prince had, however, like the 
man whom he represented, far too mer- 
ciful a disposition and compassionate a 
heart for a soldier of his day. No sol- 
dier of that day, nor hardly any of this, 
would ever have addressed the inhabitants 
of a city, which he was about to assault 
and plunder, as this soldier addressed the 
inhabitants of Harfleur. When Bliicher 
first saw London, after the battle of 
Waterloo, his natural exclamation was, 
" What a city to plunder ! " Compare 
this with King Henry *s address to the 
Harfleurians. See how fearfully con- 
scious he is of the horrors of war ! 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 1 5 ^ 

Before the Gates of Harfleur. 
The Governor and some Citizens on the Walls ; the 

English Forces below. Enter King Henry and 

his Train. 

K. Hen. How yet resolves the governor of the 
town ? 
This is the latest parle we will admit : 
Therefore, to our best mercy give yourselves, 
Or, like to men proud of destruction. 
Defy us to our worst : for, as I am a soldier, 
(A name that, in my thoughts, becomes me best,) 
If I begin the battery once again, 
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur, 
Till in her ashes she lie buried. 
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up ; 
And the fiesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart. 
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range 
With conscience wide as hell ; mowing like grass 
Your fresh fair virgins, and your flowering infants. 
What is it then to me, if impious war, 
Array'd in flames, like to the prince of fiends. 
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats 
Enlink to waste and desolation ? 
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause, 
If your pure maidens fall into the hand 
Of hot and forcing violation ? 
What rein can hold licentious wickedness. 
When down the hill he holds his fierce career? 
We may as bootless spend our vain command 
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil. 
As send precepts to the Leviathan 



154 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, 

Take pity of your town, and of your people, 

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command ; 

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace 

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds 

Of deadly murder, spoil, and villany. 

If not, why, in a moment, look to see 

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand 

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters ; 

Your fathers taken by the silver beards, 

And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls ; 

Your naked infants spitted upon pikes ; 

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd 

Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry 

At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen. 

What say you ? will you yield, and this avoid ? 

Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd ? 

Gov. Our expectation hath this day an end : 
The dauphin, whom of succor we entreated. 
Returns us — that his powers are not yet ready 
To raise so great a siege. Therefore, dread king, 
We yield our town, and lives, to thy soft mercy : 
Enter our gates ; dispose of us, and ours ; 
For we no longer are defensible. 

K. Hen. Open your gates. — Come uncle Exeter, 
Go you and enter Harfleur ; there remain. 
And fortify it strongly 'gainst the French : 
Use mercy to them all. 

This was not a man who, like the 
Spanish generals in the Netherlands, 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



155 



^could make terms of surrender with the 
inhabitants of a city, and then give them 
up to indiscriminate slaughter. Not 
only does he see and anxiously appre- 
hend all the horrors of the assaulting 
and plundering of the city, but he feels 
profound pity on the Inhabitants at the 
dread prospect, and eloquently beseeches 
them to have pity on themselves ! 

But I wished to draw the reader's 
attention to the Prince's character as 
displayed in his interviews with his fa- 
ther. Bolingbroke was a politician ; Mr. 
Knight calls him **a cold, subtle politi- 
cian ; " he was, nevertheless, according 
to Shakespeare, a wise and thoughtful 
man. John Shakespeare, the father of 
the Poet, was also a politician in his 
way, and a man of no mean character ; 
for he gradually fought his way up, 
from various subordinate and inferior 
positions, to be chief magistrate of his 
native town, and was a man of more than 
common force of character. The bare 
fact that he held all the various offices 
which he filled without any knowledge 



156 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



of letters is proof positive that the man, 
was a ruler of men by right of nature, 
by divine right : he won his position by 
sheer superiority of character. Although 
he could not write his own name, he 
dominated over all those in Stratford that 
could ; he was their leading and fore- 
most man in all important affairs: the 
patron and friend of actors and artists ; 
the man who came forward to receive the 
great ones of the earth (including per- 
haps Queen Elizabeth herself) when such 
came officially to the town, and the man 
who patriotically guarded its interests. 
For his office of chamberlain of the bor- 
ough is described as one of great re- 
sponsibility, and that of bailiff or mayor 
as the highest honor that the corpora- 
tion could bestow ; so that he was lit- 
erally " a king of men " among those 
over whom h^ ruled. 

The circumstance (shown by all his 
biographers) that Shakespeare helped his 
father with his very first earnings in Lon- 
don, is also an interesting and significant 
fact ; it displays a dutiful and loving son, 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



157 



and infers a worthy father ; and when we 
remember that the Prince breaks Fal- 
staff's head for "Hkening his father to a 
singing man of Windsor ; " that he tells 
Poins '' his heart bleeds inwardly that 
his father is so sick," and that Shake- 
speare loyally stood by his father and 
actually obtained papers from the herald's 
office to make him legally a gentleman, 
we cannot but infer that these facts hold 
together and coincide. Do not these 
things show that he honored his father 
and stood by him in trouble ? and did not 
the Prince do the same ? 

We may be sure, from the fact that 
John Shakespeare was considered worthy 
of receiving in marriage the hand of a 
woman of birth and fortune, a woman 
belonging to one of the most ancient and 
honorable families in Warwickshire, that 
he was known and respected as a man of 
superior character, of innate worth and 
respectability, among all his neighbors. 
His wife, whose maiden name was Mary 
Arden, was the daughter of Robert Ar- 
den of Wilmecote, a gentleman of good 



158 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



landed estate, and descendant of Sir 
John Arden, squire of the body of Henry 
VII. " Mary Arden," says Mr. T. Spen- 
cer Baynes, in his admirable account of 
Shakespeare in the '^ Encyclopaedia Bri- 
tannica," ''was a gentlewoman in the 
truest sense of the term, and she would 
bring into her husband's household ele- 
ments of character and culture that 
would be of priceless value to the family^ 
and especially to the eldest son, who nat- 
urally had the first place in her care and 
love. A good mother is to an imagina- 
tive boy his earliest Ideal of womanhood, 
and in her, for him, are gathered up, in all 
their vital fulness, the tenderness, sym- 
pathy, and truth, the infinite love, patient 
watchfulness, and self-abnegation of the 
whole sex. And the experience of his 
mother's bearing and example during the 
vicissitudes of their home-life must have 
been for the future dramatist a vivid rev- 
elation of the more sprightly and gra- 
cious, as well as of the profounder ele- 
ments, of female character. In the ear- 
lier and prosperous days at Stratford, 



POR TRA VED B Y HIMSELF, j ^q 

when all within the home-circle was 
bright and happy, and in her intercourse 
with her boy, Mary Shakespeare could 
freely unfold the attractive qualities that 
had so endeared her to her father's 
heart ; the delightful image of the young 
mother would melt unconsciously in the 
boy's mind, fill his imagination, and be- 
come a storehouse whence in after years 
he would draw some of the finest lines in 
his matchless portraiture of women." 

Now, then, being so fathered and so 
mothered, might not Shakespeare, when 
composing the scenes between the Prince 
and his father, have in mind something 
of the manner and language which his 
own father used in reasoning with him 
on his early excesses and imprudences ? 
Might he not have still fresh in mind 
how he too violated the law, of which 
his father was a pillar, and on ac- 
count of which his father's reprimands 
must have been all the more severe? 
And might not some tinge of this recol- 
lection be the originator and prompter 
of these remarkably interesting, touch- 



l6o WILLJAM SnAKESPEARE 

ing and instructive scenes between the 
Prince and his father ? So that the 
reader will perceive that these scenes are 
still in keeping with my view that the 
Poet depicted himself in the Prince, and 
that he still drew from personal experi- 
ences in writing these passages. Let 
the reader turn to the Fourth Scene in 
the Fourth Act of the Second Part of 
Henry the Fourth, — too long to be in- 
serted here, — and judge for himself ; let 
him read these passages carefully, and 
he will perceive that they are simply the 
natural conferences of father and son, 
drawn by the hand and colored by the 
imagination of a poet. 



PORTRAYED^BY HIMSELF. i6i 



CHAPTER XI. 

SCENE WITH THE CHIEF JUSTICE — -THE 
PRINCE CONTRASTED WITH HIS BROTHER 
JOHN— TESTIMONY OF THE POET's CON- 
TEMPORARIES AS TO HIS GENTLE CHAR- 
ACTER. 

AFTER perusing this scene, and not- 
ing especially the lines, 

If I do feign, 
O ! let me in my present wildness die, 
And never live to show the incredulous world 
The noble change that I have purposed, 

the reader will be ready for the scene in 
which the king s best hopes are realized, 
and the noble and magnanimous behavior 
of his son toward the Chief Justice is 
shown : a scene so beautiful, so full of 
noble lines, and exhibiting the Prince in 
so amiable a light, — acting and speaking 
as we cannot help thinking the Poet 



l62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

would have acted and spoken in his 
place, — that I cannot forbear giving it 
entire, without omitting a single word. 

SCENE II. — Westminster. A Room in the Palace. 
Enter Warwick, and the Lord Chief Justice. 

War. How now, my lord chief justice t whither 

away ? 
Ch. Just. How doth the king ? 
War. Exceeding well ; his cares are now all 

ended. 
Ch.Just. I hope, not dead? 
War. He's walk'd the way of nature. 

And to our purposes, he lives no more. 

Ch.Just. I would his majesty had called me with 
him : 
The service that I truly did his life 
Hath left me open to all injuries. 

War. Indeed, I think the young king loves you 

not. 
Ch.Just. I know he doth not ; and do arm my- 
self, 
To welcome the condition of the time ; 
Which cannot look more hideously upon me 
Than I have drawn it in my fantasy. 

Enter Pri?tce John, Prince Humphrey, Clarence, 
Westmoreland, and others. 

War. Here comes the heavy issue of dead Harry : 
O, that the living Harry had the temper 
Of him, the worst of these three gentlemen 1 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



163 



How many nobles then should hold their places, 
That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort ! 

Ch.Jusf. Alas ! I fear, all will be overturn'd. 

F.John. Good-morrow, cousin Warwick. 

/*. Humph. Good-morrow, cousin. 

F.John. We meet like men that had forgot to 
speak. 

War, We do remember ; but our argument 
Is all too heavy to admit much talk. 

F.John. Well, peace be with him that hath made 
us heavy ! 

Ch. Just. Peace be with us, least we be heavier ! 

F. Humph. O, good my lord, you have lost a 
friend indeed : 
And I dare swear, you borrow not that face 
Of seeming sorrow ; it is, sure, your own. 

F.John. Though no man be assur'd what grace 
to find. 
You stand in coldest expectation : 
I am the sorrier; would 'twere otherwise. 

Cla. Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaif 
fair ; 
Which swims against your stream of quality. 

Ch. Jicst. Sweet princes, what I did, I did in 
honor. 
Led by the impartial conduct of my soul ; 
And never shall you see, that I will beg 
A ragged and forestall'd remission. — ^ 
If truth and upright innocency fail me, 
I'll to the king my master that is dead, 
And tell him who hath sent me after him. 



164 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

War. Here comes the prince. 

Enter Prince Henry, as King. 

C/uJust Good-morrow ; and heaven save your 
majesty! 

King, This new and gorgeous garment, majesty, 
Sits not so easy on me as you think. — 
Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear: 
This is the English, not the Turkish court ; 
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds. 
But Harry, Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers, 
For, to speak truth, it very well becomes you : 
Sorrow so royally in you appears, 
That I will deeply put the fashion on. 
And wear it in my heart. Why, then, be sad: 
But entertain no more of it, good brothers, 
Than a joint burden laid upon us all. 
For me, by Heaven, I bid you be assured, 
I'll be your father and your brother too ; 
Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares. 
Yet weep that Harry's dead ; and so will I : 
But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears, 
By number, into hours of happiness. 

P. John, etc. We hope no other from your majesty. 

King. You all look strangely on me :^^and you 
. .most : . [To the Chief Justice. 

You are, I think, assured, I love you not. 

Ch. Just. I am. assured, if I be measured rightly, 
Your majesty hath no just cause to hate me. 

King. NoJ , .. ^. .y. ^ ' 

How might, a. prince of my great hopes forget 
So great indignities you laid upon me ? 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 165 

What ! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison 
The immediate heir of England! Was this easy? 
May this be washed in Lethe and forgotten ? 

Ch.Just. I then did use the person of your 
father ; 
The image of his power lay then in me : 
And, in the administration of his law, 
Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth, 
Your highness pleased to forget my place, 
The majesty and power of law and justice, 
The image of the king whom I presented, 
And struck me in my very seat of judgment : 
Whereon, as an offender to your father, 
I gave bold way to my authority, 
And did commit you. If the deed were ill, 
Be you contented, wearing now the garland, 
To have a son set your decrees at nought ; 
To pluck down justice from your awful bench ; 
To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword 
That guards the peace and safety of your person : 
Nay, more : to spurn at your most royal image. 
And mock your workings in a second body. 
Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours ; 
Be now the father, and propose a son : 
Hear your own dignity so much profaned, 
See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted, 
Behold yourself so by a son disdained ; 
And then imagine me taking your part. 
And, in your power, soft silencing your son : 
After this cold consideration, sentence me ; 
And, as you are a king, speak in your state, 



I ^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

What I have done that misbecame my place, 
My person, or my liege's sovereignty. 
King. You are right, justice, and you weigh 
this well ; 
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword : 
And I do wish your honors may increase. 
Till you do live to see a son of mine 
Offend you, and obey you, as I did. 
So shall I live to speak my father's words : — 
" Happy am I, that have a man so bold, 
That dares do justice on my proper son ; 
And not less happy, having such a son, 
That would deliver up his greatness so 
Tnto the hands of justice." — You did commit me : 
For which I do commit into your hand 
The unstained sword that you have used to bear : 
With this remembrance, — That you use the same 
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit. 
As you have done 'gainst me. There is my hand ; 
You shall be as a father to my youth : 
My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear ; 
And I will stoop and humble my intents 
To your well-practised, wise directions. — - 
And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you ; 
My father is gone wild into his grave, 
For in his tomb lie my affections ; 
And with his spirit sadly I survive, 
To mock the expectation of the world ; 
To frustrate prophecies ; and to raze out 
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down 
After my seeming. The tide of blood in me 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



167 



Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now ; 
Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea : 
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, 
And flow henceforth in formal majesty. 
Now call we our high court of parliament : 
And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel. 
That the great body of our state may go 
In equal rank with the best governed nation ; 
That war, or peace, or both at once, may be 
As things acquainted and familiar to us ; — 
In which you, father, shall have foremost hand. 

\To the Lord Chief Justice. 
Our coronation done, we will accite. 
As I before remembered, all our state : 
And (God consigning to my good intents) 
No prince, nor peer, shall have just cause to say, 
Heaven shorten Harry's happy life one day ! 

What a contrast is all this to the 
wretched conduct of his brother John ! 
What a contrast does the Prince's treat- 
ment of the Chief Justice present to 
John's mean and infamous behavior in 
delivering up the surrendered noblemen 
to the hangman ! If the Prince were 
made to commit any atrocity of this kind, 
I should say at once, " No; this cannot 
be the Poet;" but he never does; such 
conduct is foreign to his nature. He is 



1 68 WILL/ AM SHAKESPEARE: 

always kind, considerate, merciful, and 
magnanimous. 

When Falstaff finds that his wit has 
no effect upon John, that treacherous and 
cruel prince, he exclaims : " This same 
young sober-blooded boy doth not love 
me, and a man cannot make him laugh." 
Of course he cannot make him laugh ; 
for it needs a heart as well as a head to ap- 
preciate wit, and Prince John had neither. 
'' He who cannot be softened into gayety," 
says Johnson, "cannot easily be melted 
into kindness." *' And none," adds Hud- 
son, '' are so hopeless as those who have 
no bowels." Let the reader remember 
Prince Henry's kindness to the tapsters, 
to the page of Falstaff, to Mrs. Quickly, 
and to all with whom he came in contact ; 
let him remember that the Poet was uni- 
versally esteemed for the gentleness and 
kindliness of his demeanor toward all 
with whom he had any dealings ; let him 
remember that when the actors had re- 
jected Ben Jonson's play. Every Man 
in his Humor, Shakespeare took it up, 
found something meritorious in it, and 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF, 



169 



caused It to be accepted ; let him com- 
pare these actions with those of the 
Prince, and he will not fail to become 
convinced that the Prince and the Poet 
are one and the same person. 

" Falstaff's pride of wit," says Mr. 
Hudson, commenting on his encounter 
with Prince John, ''a pride which is most 
especially gratified in the fascination he 
has upon Prince Henry, is shrewdly man- 
ifested here, while at the same time a 
very important and operative principle of 
human character in general, and of Prince 
John's character in particular, is most 
hintingly touched. Falstaff sees that the 
brain of this sober-blooded boy has noth- 
ing for him to get hold of or work upon ; 
that, be he ever so witty In himself, he 
cannot be the cause of any wit In him; 
and he is vexed and mortified that his 
wit fails upon him. And the Poet meant 
no doubt to have it understood that 
Prince Henry was drawn and held to 
falstaff by virtue of something that 
raised him immeasurably above his 
brother; and that the frozen regularity 



IfO 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



whrch was proof against all the batteries 
of wit and humor was all of a piece, 
vitally, with the moral hardness which 
would not flinch from such an abominable 
act of perfidy as that towards the Arch- 
bishop and his party." True, Mr. Hud- 
son, very true ; he possessed " something 
that raised him immeasurably above his 
brother," who had nothing of the noble 
and brilliant character of the Prince, 
whose characteristics were all gentle and 
noble, like those of the Poet. How 
much the Prince (or the Poet) enjoyed 
humor, and how heartily he could laugh, 
we may see from what Falstaff is going 
to make out of Shallow : " I will devise 
matter enough out of this Shallow to 
keep Prince Harry in continual laughter 
the wearing out of six fashions (which 
is four terms or two actions), and he 
shall laugh without intervallums. O ! 
you shall see him laugh, till his face be 
like a wet blanket ill laid up ! " 

With all his faults, with all his wild 
pranks and loose talk, there is perhaps 
no more essentially noble, humane, arid 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELP. 



171 



magnanimous character in literature 
than this Henry, Prince of Wales, 
now become king, and whom we have 
every reason to regard as the like- 
ness of Shakespeare. Not only do we 
find him showing the gentlest, kindest 
condescension to persons of low degree, 
but suing for grace, favor, and liberty 
to rebels and insurgents of high degree, 
men who endeavored to dethrone his 
father and ruin his family, men who, 
like the redoubtable Douglas, were the 
most formidable enemies of himself and 
his house : 

Go to the Douglas, and deliver him 
Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free : 
His valor, shown upon our crests to-day, 
Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds, 
Even in the bosom of our adversaries. 

And when that prince of cowards, 
Falstaff, takes up Percy's body and is 
carrying it off as the proof of his valor, 
how magnanimously the Prince covers 
his deception ! 

Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back : 
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, 
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have. 



Ij^2 



WILLIAM SBAIC^SPEAR^ 



Might not this be regarded, not only 
as characteristic of the Poet's magnan- 
imity, but of his indifference to fame ? 

Shortly before saiHng for France, the 
Prince (now king) thus displays '' the 
attribute to awe and majesty," toward 
an unfortunate offender of the hour: 

King. Uncle of Exeter, 

Enlarge the man committed yesterday, 
That railed against our person : we consider 
It was excess of wine that set him on ; 
And, on his more advice, we pardon him. 

Scroop. That's mercy ; but too much security. 
Let him be punished, sovereign ; lest example 
Breed bv this sufferance more of such a kind. 

Kitig. O ! let us yet be merciful. 

It is true, this mercy to " the man that 
railed against our person yesterday " 
serves to make his condemnation of the 
bribed traitors who were about to mur- 
der him, all the more severe and unex- 
pected ; but this is history, and the other 
is a stroke of character. 

Before concluding this chapter, let me 
say a word or two more touching the 
character of the Prince, that I may com- 



PORTkA VED B Y NIMSMIP. 



^7^ 



pare It with the character of the Poet as 
reported by his contemporaries. 

With all his extravagant and royster- 
ing ways, we feel that the Prince was, 
like the Poet, the quintessence of honor in 
his every-day life. '* Do thou stand for 
my father," he says to Falstaff, '* and ex- 
amine me upon the particulars of my 
life." He is no more afraid to answer 
for the particulars of his life than to meet 
the most powerful enemies of his house, 
Douglas, Percy, and Glendower ; for he 
knows there is as little dishonor in the 
one as dread in the other. 

When he appears before his father, he 
tells him plainly he is not so bad as he is 
painted : 

So please your majest}', I would I could 
Quit all offences with as clear excuse, 
As well as, 1 atn doubtless, I can purge 
Myself of many I am charged withal. 

When reproached with making himself 
too common in the public eye, and losing 
his ''princely privilege with vile partici- 
pation," he does not say he has been 
bad and will reform ; but 



f74 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, 
Be more myself. 

And when his father goes so far as to 
say : 

Thou art like enough, through vassal fear. 
Base inclination, and the start of spleen, 
To fight against me under Percy's pay ; 

he exclaims : 

Do not think so ; you shall not find it so ! 

And God forgive them that so much have swayed 

Your majesty's good thoughts away from me. 

All which answers completely to the 
character of the Poet ; for although known 
to have been fond of companionship 
of all sorts, and to have engaged in wild 
pranks, he has never been accused, by 
any reputable person, of dishonorable or 
disgraceful actions. 

No man is more conscious of the evil 
of his surroundinofs than the Prince. 
"Why, thou globe of sinful continents," 
he says to Falstaff, " what a life dost 
thou lead !" Behind the mask of revel- 
ry and laughter, we may easily perceive 
the earnest and thoughtful countenance 



POKTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



175 



of the deep-thinking man. To see how 
full-charged his mind and heart are, we 
have but to turn to his soliloquies by the 
death-bed of his father : 

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, 
Being so troublesome a bedfellow ! 
O, polished perturbation ! golden care ! 
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide 
To many a watchful night ! — Sleep with it now ! 
Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sweet, 
As he, whose brow with homely biggin bound, 
Snores out the watch of night. O majesty ! 
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit 
Like a rich armor worn in heat. of day, 
That scalds with safety. 

Could Hamlet himself have spoken 
more philosophically, or more eloquently ? 
Even in the midst of his revelry, he sud- 
denly exclaims, *' Well, thus we play the 
fools with the time, and the spirits of 
the wise sit in the clouds and mock us ! " 
And at the end of the scene in which he 
and Poins surprise Falstaff with his mis- 
tress, he thus takes his leave of them : 

By Heaven, Poins, 1 feel me much to blame 
So idly to profane the precious time, 
When tempest of commotion, like the south, 



176 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



Borne with black vapor, doth begin to melt, 

And drop upon our bare unarmed heads. 

Give me my sword and cloak. — Falstaff, good night. 

Even in that '' Falstaff, good night " 
there shines the magnanimous soul of 
one who could bear no ill-will even to 
one who had just heaped upon him a 
load of unmerited abuse. 

Wherever it is possible, Shakespeare 
makes him the mild, gentle, thoughtful 
man he was himself ; gentle and conde- 
scending to his inferiors, nimble-witted 
and charming among his equals, and 
kind and considerate to his inferiors. 
From the testimony of his contempora- 
ries, it is evident that Shakespeare was 
loved by all that knew him, and hated by 
none. ''Our sweet Will," ''the gentle 
bard of Avon," " that same gentle spirit," 
" pur pleasant Willy," " that gentle shep- 
herd," " honey-tongued Shakespeare," 
are the expressions by which he is char- 
acterized by them. " The man whom 
Nature's self hath made to mock herself, 
and truth to imitate," is Spenser's happy 
phrase. " Myself have seen his de- 



FOR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



177 



meaner, no less civil than excellent in 
the quality he professes," is Chettle's 
valuable testimony. " I love the man, 
and do honor his memory this side idola- 
try," is the warm expression of his in- 
timate friend Ben Jonson. " He was 
very good company, and of a very ready 
and pleasant smooth wit," says Aubrey. 
"He redeemed his vices with his vir- 
tues," says Ben Jonson. " and there was 
more in him to be praised than to be 
blamed." 

Could any words characterize the 
Prince better than these ? Did he not 
" redeem his vices with his virtues ? " and 
was there not." more in him to be praised 
than to be blamed?" Hudson, one of 
the very best of all Shakespeare's editors 
and biographers, thus sums up the Poet's 
character : *' Scanty as are the materials, 
enough we think has been given to show 
that in all the common dealings of life, 
Shakespeare was eminently gentle, can- 
did, upright, and judicious ; open-hearted, 
genial, and sweet in his social inter- 
course ; among his companions and 



13 



178 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



friends full of playful wit and sprightly 
grace ; kind to the faults of others, severe 
to his own ; quick to discern and ac- 
knowledge merit in another, modest and 
slow of finding it in himself ; while in the 
smooth and happy marriage, which he 
seems to have realized, of the highest 
poetry and art with systematic and suc- 
cessful prudence in business affairs, we 
have an example of compact and well- 
rounded practical manhood, such as may 
justly engage our perpetual admiration." 
And Mr. Halliwell thus ends his account 
of him : '* The character of Shakespeare 
is even better than his history. We have 
direct and undeniable proofs that he was 
prudent and active in the business of 
life, judicious and honest, possessing 
great conversational talent, universally 
esteemed as gentle and amiable ; yet 
more desirous of accumulating property 
than of increasing his reputation, and oc- 
casionally indulging in courses irregular 
and wild, but not incompatible with this 
generic summary." 

Who will say that all this has no re- 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



179 



semblance to the Prince ? Can it not be 
easily conceived that the Poet's picture of 
the Prince is just that of himself in his 
youth, when he ** indulged in the courses 
irregular and wild," so much spoken of 
by his biographers ? But there are other 
considerations, still stronger, to fortify 
the truth of this conception. 



l8o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE STAGE AS A PROFESSION IN SHAKE- 

SPEARE's TIME THE POET's ARRIVAL IN 

LONDON, AND HIS FIRST OCCUPATION 
AND COMPANIONSHIP TPIERE. 

THE theater was, in Shakespeare's 
time, like the newspaper press of 
to-day, the one arena toward which an 
intellectual youth, arriving in a great 
city, naturally gravitated. It was the 
great place of recreation, toward whicli, 
as it afforded instruction as well as 
amusement, the people crowded in con- 
stantly increasing numbers. ** It is 
pretty evident," says Mr. Hudson, *' that 
in Shakespeare's time the drama was 
decidedly a great institution ; it was 
a sort of Fourth Estate in the realm, 
nearly as much so perhaps as the news- 
paper press is in our day. Practically, 
the government of the Commonwealth 



PORTRA YED B y HIMS^ELP. i% i 

was vested in king, lords, commons, 
and dramatists, including in the latter 
both writers and actors ; so that the 
Poet had far more reason than now 
exists for making Hamlet say to the old 
statesman : ' After your death you had 
better have a bad epitaph, than their 
ill report while you live.' Perhaps we 
may add," says the same writer, **as 
illustrating the prodigious rush of life 
and thought towards the drama in that 
age, that, besides the dozen authors of 
whom I have spoken, Henslowe's Diary 
shows the names of thirty other drama- 
tists, most of whom have propagated 
some part of their workmanship down to 
our time ; and in the same document 
there are recorded, during the twelve 
years beginning in February, 1591, the 
titles of not fewer than 270 pieces, either 
as original compositions or as revivals of 
older plays." Stephen Gosson, in his 
Tract entitled ** Plays confuted in Five 
Actions," published in 1581, has this re- 
markable description of the activity of 
the London stage at this time : ** I may 



Xg2 WILLIAM mAKESPEARB 

boldly say it, because I have seen It, 
that The Palace of Pleasurey The Golde7i 
Ass J The Ethiopian History, Aiuadis 
of France, The Round Table, 2iX\d. bawdy 
comedies in Latin, French, Italian and 
Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked, 
to furnish the play-houses in London." 

And in the Return fro7n Parnassus, a 
poem published in 1601, there is a pas- 
sage which strikingly illustrates the won- 
derful success and enviable position of 
the Players of the time, the last line in 
which may refer directly to Shakespeare 
himself : 

England affords those glorious vagabonds, 
That carried erst their fardels on their backs, 
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets. 
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits ; 
With mouthing words that better wits have framed. 
They purchased lands, and now esquires are made. 

Here then was a market for dramatic 
genius ; here was an opportunity for him 
who could produce anything new, fresh, 
and original in dramatic literature; here 
was the sphere, the companionship, the 
sights, scenes, and sounds which attracted 



PORTkA YEb BY MiMs^LP. 



183 



the youthful genius, full of all noble fan- 
cies, in love with poetry and romance, 
and burning for a place among the 
world^s heroes. Such was the arena into 
which Shakespeare entered ; such was 
the promising field that attracted him to 
London ; and such was the market in 
which he grew rich. Here he found an 
occupation in which he could bring all 
his noble faculties into play. He wanted 
scope for powers greater than those 
of the money-maker; he wanted room 
for the expression of his thought, his 
fancies and conceptions ; and the theater, 
of all the places in the world, was the 
one place most favorable for this pur- 
pose. Unknown and uninfluential as he 
was, there was no other position so ac- 
cessible to him ; none other so suitable 
for him. The comfortable situations 
in the government service were mo- 
nopolized by the nobility and gentry ; 
these were theirs by a sort of natural 
right ; and the Poet had to look for his 
living in a more active situation. Thus 
both fortune and his tastes pointed 



184 



William shakespearm 



the same way. Even if he could have 
had his choice, he would probably have 
preferred a position in the theater to 
one in the government. Be that as it 
may, we know that he enrolled himself 
in one of those dramatic companies which 
he subsequently styled '' the abstracts 
and brief chronicles of the time ;" and, 
having once done so, he bent all his 
energies to master everything connected 
with it. 

Nor did he come into unworthy com- 
pany ; for the dramatic societies of that 
day seem to have been made up of gen- 
erous and noble souls, fit associates even 
for Shakespeare. Davies, his contempo- 
rary, thus writes of them in 1603 : 

Players, I love ye and your quality, 

As ye are men that pastime not abused ; 
And some I love for painting poesy, 

And say fell Fortune cannot be excused 
That hath for better uses you refused : 

Wit, courage, good shape, good parts, and all 
good. 
As long as all these goods are no worse used : 

And though the stage doth stain pure gentle 
blood, 
Yet generous ye are in mind and mood. 



fiOkTRAYEt) BY HI USE LP. 



185 



This is excellent testimony to their 
character and quality. Who would not 
like to belong to a company that had 
"wit, courage, good shape, good parts," 
and were ''generous in mind and mood"? 
Such were the men with whom Shake- 
speare associated ; such were the char- 
acters with whom he played and for 
whose acting he wrote his plays. 

It is exceedingly probable, from vari- 
ous circumstances in his family history, 
that Shakespeare knew something of 
these players before he left Stratford ; 
for his father is known to have been 
friendly to the actors who visited Strat- 
ford, and I am inclined to believe that he 
was the personal friend of some of them. 
Several of those who subsequently acted 
with Shakespeare in London and else- 
where — notably Burbage, Green, and 
Tooley — were from the same county as 
himself, and it is probable that these 
townsmen of his were the personal 
friends of his father as well as of himself. 
Even if they were not, it is not likely 
that when there came to London the son 



1 36 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the former chief magistrate of Strat- 
ford, who had been the friend and patron 
of the players that visited the town, 
he would have been received with cold- 
ness or indifference. We may be sure 
that young Shakespeare took advan- 
tage of his father s generous hospitality 
toward the strolling players, not only to 
witness their performances, but to cul- 
tivate their personal acquaintance in 
Stratford. 

A gentleman named Willis, born in 
the same year as Shakespeare, 1564, 
gives, in a narrative of his life, an ac- 

^ count of " a stage-play which he saw 
when he was a child," which seems 
strongly to fortify the supposition that 
Shakespeare witnessed such plays in his 

' youth. '* In the city of Gloucester," 
says he, " the manner is, as I think it 
is in other like corporations, that, when 
players of enterludes come to towne, 
they first attend the Mayor to enforme 
him what nobleman's servants they are, 
and so to get licence for their publike 
playing ; and if the Mayor like the actors. 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



187 



or would shew respect to their lord and 
master, he appoints them to play their 
first play before himselfe and the Alder- 
men and Common Counsell of the city ; 
and that is called the Mayor's play, 
where every one that will comes in with- 
out money, the Mayor giving the players 
a reward as hee thinks fit to shew respect 
unto them. At such a play my father 
tooke me with him, and made mee stand 
betweene his leggs as he sat upon one 
of the benches, where we saw and heard 
very well." Then he gives a detailed 
account of the play, which was called the 
'' Cradle of Security," and which is now 
lost. 

'' Who can be so pitiless to the im- 
agination," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, 
" as not to erase the name of Gloucester 
In the preceding anecdote, and replace it 
by that of Stratford-on-Avon ?" And 
who can be so pitiless to the Imagination 
as not to fancy John Shakespeare the 
name of the mayor, and his son, the little 
boy between his knees, watching the 
play? We may, at all events, rest a^- 



1 88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sured that his son was likely to have aid- 
ed in the generous welcome to the play- 
ers, and the players were likely to have 
remembered the intelligent lad, and tried 
to requite the kindness of the father by 
their hospitable reception of the son. 
Who can help thinking, too, that it was 
perhaps the sight of one of these old- 
fashioned plays which, like young Moli- 
ere's sight of the comedy at the Hotel de 
Bourgogne, first awakened in him a de- 
sire for better things than he had known, 
kindled a love of poesy, and a passion 
for the drama ? Oh, there will come a 
time when some one, some genial master 
hand, will work all this up in some life- 
like story, some fascinating romance, 
that will charm all mankind ! 

Under these circumstances, nothing 
can be more likely than that the magis- 
trate's son received a generous welcome 
at the hands of the actors in their Lon- 
don home, and that they secured him a 
position in their fraternity. Besides, it 
is well known that those cominor from the 
provincial or rural parts of England to 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



189 



the great metropolis often seek out and 
associate with their townsmen and com- 
patriots, who, glad to hear from home, 
generally receive them with kindness and 
favor. 

Those who have resided in London 
know what clannishness there is, even at 
this day, among those hailing from the 
same county or town In that small isl- 
and of Britain, and how generously and 
kindly the absentee from home takes to 
a new arrival from his native hills. I 
have seen this myself ; for even as late 
as 1 86 1-2, when I was in London, I 
was surprised to find that there were 
in that great metropolis associations of 
Yorkshire-men, Caithness-men, Welsh- 
men, etc., expressly formed for mutual 
assistance and friendly intercourse. '' At 
all events," says Mr. HalHwell-Phiilipps, 
speaking of Shakespeare's acquaintance 
with Richard Field, who was a Warwick- 
shire man, and who printed the first edi- 
tion of his Ve7tus and Adonis, *' there was 
the provincial tie, — so specially dear to 
Englishmen when at a distance from the 



IQO 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



town of their birth, — between the Poet 
and his printer.". And this tie, more 
especially dear perhaps to a poet than 
to another, existed between himself and 
several of the actors with whom he was 
so long associated, and was perhaps that 
which drew as well as bound him to them 
for so many years. 

It is more than probable, therefore, 
that he came to London with a previous 
understanding that he would, on his 
arrival, receive a position connected with 
the theater ; for, as he was already mar- 
ried, and had a wife and child to support, 
so wise and prudent a man was not likely 
to have ventured to London on mere 
speculation. Is it likely that, if he had 
come to London as a sort of beggarly 
holder of horses at the theater-doors, 
he would in two years after his arrival in 
London have acquired sufficient wealth 
and reputation to become one of the fif- 
teen proprietors of the Blackfriars' The- 
ater? Is it likely that he would in so 
short a time have become the friend and 
companion of various noblemen and of 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELR 



191 



some of the most considerable persons of 
the time? "The reason why we know 
so little of Shakespeare," says Maginn, 
" is, that when his business was over at 
the theater, he did not mix with his fel- 
low-aetors, but stepped into his boat, and 
rowed up to Whitehall, there to spend 
his time with the Earl of Southampton, 
and other gentlemen about the Court." 
The bare fact that he became the es- 
teemed friend and companion of such 
men as Southampton is a proof that 
he was, from the first, a man of taste 
and refinement. So also is the circum- 
stance that he bought, with his first con- 
siderable earnings, the finest house in his 
native town, and put his family into it. 
A man of low origin and vulgar tastes 
would have had other associates, and 
would have spent his money in quite a 
different way. 

Instead of being Incredible, therefore, 
Shakespeare's career seems to me of all 
things most credible and natural ; for he 
came to his work in the most natural 
way that can be Imagined. No college- 



1^2 WILLIAM SHAk^ESPEAJiE 

bred, classic-crammed formalist could ever 
have composed the free and easy, prec- 
edent-defying, rule-defying, and entirely 
©riginal compositions which go under his 
name. None but a naturally-developed, 
free and independent genius could have 
produced such marvellous works. They 
probably came to him as naturally and 
as easily as the historical romances 
came to Walter Scott, and he perhaps 
dashed off a play in as short a space of 
time as Scott dashed off a romance. We 
know this to have been the case with The 
Merry Wives of Windsor, and it is not 
improbable that the same was the case 
with others of his plays. In Loves 
Labor s Lost, he makes Biron say : 

Small have continual plodders ever won, 
Save base authority, from others' books. 

" Fortunately for us," says Mr. Halli- 
well-Phillipps, "the youthful dramatist 
had, excepting in the school-room, lit- 
tle opportunity of studying any but a 
grander volume, the infinite book of na- 
ture, the pages of which were ready to be 



PORTRA VJBD By J//MS£Zk 



.m 



unfolded to him in the lane and field, 
amongst the copses of Snitterfield, by 
the side of the river, or by that of his 
uncle's hedgerows." 
13 



194 



WILLIAM SBAkESPEARB- 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Shakespeare's career in london — how 

HIS CONDUCT closely RESEMBLES THAT 
OF THE PRINCE. 

N'OW let us turn to the scene in 
which the Prince, on ascending the 
throne, discards Falstaff and his other 
companions, and see how it resembles the 
Poet's conduct on arriving in London. 

Enter the King and his train ; the Chief Justice 
among them. 

Fat. God save thy grace, King Hal ! my royal 

Hal! 
Fist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most 

royal imp of fame ! 
FaL God save thee, my sweet boy ! 
King. My lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain 

man. 
Ch.Just. Have you your wits? Know you what 

'tis you speak ? 
Fal. My king 1 my Jove ! I speak to thee, my 

heart I 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. j g - 

King. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy 
prayers : 
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester ! 
I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, 
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane ; 
But, being awake, I do despise my dream. 
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace ; 
Leave gormandizing ; know, the grave doth gape 
For thee thrice wider than for other men. 
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest : 
Presume not that I am the thing I was ; 
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, 
That I have turned away my former self : 
So will I those that kept me company. 
When thou dost hear I am as I have been, 
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast. 
The tutor and the feeder of my riots : 
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death. 
As I have done the rest of my misleaders, 
Not to come near our person by ten mile. 
For competence of life I will allow you, 
That lack of means enforce you not to evil ; 
And as we hear you do reform yourselves. 
We will, according to your strength and qualities. 
Give you advancement. — Be it your charge, my lord, 
To see performed the tenor of our word. — 
Set on. 

When the Prince ascended the throne 
he was twenty-six years of age. When 
Shakespeare came to London, and en- 



19^ 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



. tered Upon his royal career as an aetor 
and author, he was about the same age. 
This was the turning-point in his career^ 
He had till then but played and dallied 
with the world ; he now began to work- 
Like the Prince, he now determined to 
"plod like a man for working days," and 
show those who misjudged htm what 
he could do, and how much they had 
''looked beyond him." He would dis- 
card, banish, and shake off forever all his 
wild companions and rude habits; he 
would "turn away his former self" and 
" live to show the incredulous world the 
noble things that he had purposed." 
Being now awake he " did despise his 
dream," for he was "no longer the thing 
he was." All the old deer-stealing and 
riotous practices became distasteful to 
him, and he went vigorously to work to 
learn all that his capacious mind could 

' grasp. He noted the various characters 
and variegated scenes in that motley 
world of London, then beginning to be 
the greatest center^ of life and- intelli- 
gen ce in E urope ; s tu died- all the - b^st 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 



197 



books he could lay hands on ; began try- 
ing his hand at composition; made his 
way, step by step, from the retouching 
and remodelling of old plays to the cre- 
ation of new ones; gained a footing 
among his fellow-actors and authors, and 
a reputation among the public, as an 
excellent dramatist and a good actor; 
saved his money and sent forty pounds 
(equal to two hundred pounds or one 
thousand dollars of our present money) 
to his father to relieve a mortgaged 
estate ; and before he was thirty-three 
acquired sufficient wealth to purchase the 
best house in his native town of Stratford. 
Like Warren Hastings at Daylesford, he 
seems to have made up his mind, before 
leaving Stratford, that he would recover 
the ancestral estates by the exercise of 
his talents, and return some day to live 
in ease and comfort on them. He had 
already tried his hand at verse before 
leaving Stratford ; he had acquired some 
literary skill in the composition of Venus 
and Adonis ; he felt, he knew, that he 
could do better ; that he could accom- 



Iq8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

plish greater things ; so he turned to the 
drama, not only because it was more re- 
munerative than any other kind of com- 
position, but because it was a more di- 
rect means of making himself felt, both 
among the people and among the rulers 
of the people. '' The tide of blood in 
me," he says to the Chief Justice, 

Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now : 
Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea, 
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, 
And flow henceforth in formal majesty. 

That was his determination, and he 
made it good. 

He now began to associate with men 
of rank and culture ; the Earl of South- 
ampton was his fast friend and compan- 
ion ; the two noble brothers, the Earls of 
Pembroke and of Montgomery, seem to 
have been his friends and patrons ; he 
became favorably known at court, and 
from that time onward he was a new 
man altogether. Having now a wife and 
little ones to provide for, every motive 
worthy of a man called upon him to 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. \ 99 

exert himself, to bring his talents into 
play, and to disappoint those who " did 
prophetically forethink his fall." Now it 
was he turned to books, and devoured 
their contents with the "divine hunger 
of genius " ; now it was he laid all liter- 
ature under contribution to supply his 
intellectual wants; now it was he "re- 
deemed time when men thought least he 
would " ; now it was his mind became 
" a paradise to envelop and contain celes- 
tial spirits " ; now it was, in short, he 
was to reign in a kingdom not only 
greater and more glorious than any over 
which his predecessors had reigned, but 
greater and more enduring than ever 
king or queen had reigned over. 

Even the " small Latin and less Greek" 
he must have acquired at this tirne ; for 
how much of these could he have acquired 
before his fourteenth year at a village 
school? The fact that he knew some- 
thing of these languages, having prob- 
ably acquired a working knowledge of 
both, is proof positive of the studious 
and industrious turn he took at this 



200 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

period, and of the serious way in which 
he spent his time. In this very play 
of Henry the Fifths he shows how well 
he knew French ; and whatever other 
French books he may have read, there is 
good evidence, from a certain quotation, 
that he read in that language the book 
of books, the Geneva edition of the 
French Bible, 1583. That he was well 
acquainted with the Bishops' Bible every- 
body knows. I believe he ransacked 
libraries in pursuit of knowledge, and 
studied languages in order to get at 
their literary contents. This is proved, 
I think, by what Ben Jonson, his familiar 
friend, says of him in his famous eulogy : 

Yet must I not give nature all ; thy art, 

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part ; 

For though the poet's matter nature be, 

His art doth give the fashion [shape]. And, that he 

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat 

(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat 

Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same, 

And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ; 

Or, for the laurel, he inay gain a scorn, 

For a good poet's made as well as born : 

And such wert tho", L:>ok bow the father's face 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 20 1 

Lives in his issue; even so the race 

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 

In his well-turned and true-filed lines ; 

In each of which he seems to shake a lance 

As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance. 

His pages teem with allusions to liter- 
ature of the best sort, and nearly all his 
plots are taken from well-known works 
of fiction in the English, French, Italian, 
and Spanish literatures. He had sown 
his wild oats ; he had done with wild- 
ness and unlettered companions ; he had 
''broken through the clouds of ugly mists 
and vapors that did seem to strangle 
him " ; and thirsting for men and things 
of a nobler order, he determined to make 
the most of that "tide in the affairs of 
men which, taken at the flood, leads on 
to fortune." 

Never was such a sudden scholar made : 

Never came reformation in a flood, 

With such a heady current, scouring faults; 

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness 

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, 

As in this king. 

Could anything be more likely, from 
what we know of Shakespeare's life, than 



202 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

that he drew this picture from his own 
experience ? Could anything be more 
probable, seeing that all his characters 
are actually drawn from life ? This prac- 
tice of painting one's own form and fea- 
ture under another name is by no means 
uncommon among authors. It is, in fact, 
a very common practice. Has not Field- 
ing painted himself in *'Tom Jones"? 
Has not Dickens described himself and 
his early companions in " David Copper- 
field " ? Has not Goethe given us his real 
autobiography in " Wilhelm Meister"? 
Has not Walter Scott made himself the 
hero of ^*The Antiquary," and Balzac 
that of ''Louis Lambert"? Has not 
Byron painted himself in all his poems ? 
And why should not Shakespeare, the 
greatest life-painter of them all, delineate 
himself and his companions in one of his 
plays ? Why should not he, the greatest 
of realists, paint his own career in one 
of his delightful dramas ? 

There is no field like experience ; there 
is no ground so easily described as that 
one has trodden one's self ; there are no 



PORTRAYED BV HIMSELP'. 



dO] 



scenes so vivid and real to our minds 
as those we have witnessed in our early 
days ; and, consequently, there are none 
on which writers of fiction delight so 
much to dwell. Nowhere does an author 
walk with so sure a step as in those 
paths he has trodden in youth; nowhere 
is he so much at home as among his early 
friends and companions. In fact, the 
best works of the great masters of fiction 
are generally drawn from their own life- 
material ; and as Fielding is at his best in 
"Tom Jones," Dickens in " David Cop- 
perfield," and Goethe in " Wilhelm Meis- 
ter," so is Shakespeare at his best in 
Henry IV. Macaulay calls it the finest of 
his comedies ; and Johnson declares that 
*' perhaps no author has ever, in two 
plays {Henry IV, and F.), afforded so 
much delight." Even in his own day it 
was perhaps the most highly appreciated 
and most popular of all his plays. *' It 
may fairly be questioned," says Mr. Hal- 
Hwell-Phillipps, " if any comedy on the 
early English stage was more immedi- 
ately or enthusiastically appreciated than 



204 



WILLIAM SiiAK^SPEARk 



was the First Part of Henry the Fourth.''' 
There were no fewer than six editions 
published in the author's Hfetime, and it 
became the favorite comedy, not only of 
the populace, but of the Queen and the 
court. There is more wit, fun, humor, 
life, and philosophy in this play than in 
anything else he has written. It is, as 

. Lord Bacon said of his confession, "his 
hand, his head, his heart," his very self as 
he lived. *' The drama of Henry IV,, 
taking the two parts as artistically one," 
says Mr. Hudson, "is deservedly ranked 
among the very highest of Shakespeare's 
achievements. The characterization, 
whether for quantity, quality, or variety, 
or whether regarded in the individual de- 

. velopment or in the dramatic combina- 
tion, is above all praise. And yet, large 
and free as is the scope here given to in- 
vention, the parts are all strictly subordi- 
nated to the idea of the whole as an his- 
torical drama; insomuch that even Fal- 
staff, richly ideal as is the character, 
everywhere helps on the history, a whole 
century of old English wit and sense and 



pan TRA VMD B V mMsJslP. 20's. 

humor being crowded together and com- 
pacted in him." 

As I have already said, Shakespeare 
no more invented men and women than 
he invented plots ; he simply drew such 
men and women as he was acquainted 
with, and set down such conversations as 
he heard around him. "Shakespeare," 
says Richard Grant White, " invented 
nothing, and created nothing but charac- 
ter. The greatest of dramatists, he con- 
tributed to the drama nothing but him- 
self ; the greatest of poets, he gave to 
poetry not even a new rhythm or a 
new stanza." Character-painting was his 
forte ; and surely there was no character 
he knew so well and could paint so easily 
as his own. "Genius is not a creator 
in the sense of feigning or fancying what 
does not exist," says Dr. Channing ; " its 
distinction consists in discerninof more 
of truth than ordinary minds." Shake- 
speare discerned and understood the char- 
acter of men and women more profoundly 
than others, and he had the power of 
painting them more fairly and truly than 



2o6 W-ILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Others. Goethe says that any character 
that will bear examination must be taken 
from real life ; and that is why every 
character in Shakespeare will bear the 
closest examination. Ben Jonson, wish- 
ing to expose a vice or a passion on 
the stage, built up a character to suit it : 
to expose avarice, he made a character 
avaricious in all he said, thought and did. 
That was not Shakespeare's way. He 
did not care so much to paint vices or 
virtues as to paint men ; he thought 
only of the man or woman, not of the 
vices, and painted him or her as he or 
she actually was, with all the blemishes, 
as Cromwell wished the painter to paint 
him. He was the true realistic painter 
of the age, revealing human nature in all 
its shapes and forms ; in its richness and 
its poverty ; its symmetry and its de- 
formity ; its nobility and its degradation ; 
and in so doing he found his models 
among the various classes of people with 
whom he came in personal contact 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



207 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Shakespeare's learning — his experi- 
ence IN foreign travel. 

AFTER quoting various arguments 
by which certain writers endeavor 
to prove that Shakespeare read only- 
translations, Dr. Maginn rightly ex- 
claims, ** How does all this trumpery 
prove that he was not able to read Plu- 
tarch in the original ?" It is well known 
that many persons who can easily read a 
book in a foreign tongue prefer a trans- 
lation when they can get it. Emerson 
declares that he never read an original 
when he could procure a translation. I 
know that, althoucrh I can read French 
and German almost as easily and intelli- 
gently as English, I prefer a translation 
of any French or German book when I 
can get it ; and if I wished to construct a 
story or an essay on the contents of that 



208 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

book, I should certainly study the trans- 
lation in preference to the original. The 
translation comes nearer home ; enters 
and lodges in the mind more readily ; 
and more naturally forms a part of one's 
thoughts. Reading in a foreign tongue 
makes one think in a foreign way ; and 
perhaps one reason why Shakespeare 
wrote such admirable Eno^Hsh, is because 
his sources were in that lancruas^e, which 
did not prevent the natural flow of purely 
English words and phrases. 

As to Shakespeare's knowledge of 
Latin, Dr. Maginn makes the very im- 
portant statement, with reference to 
Jonson's testimony of '' small Latin and 
less Greek," that the possession of any 
Greek knowledge at all in the days 
of Elizabeth argues a very respectable 
knowledge of Latin ; because at that 
time, it was only through Latin, and by 
means of no small acquaintance with its 
literature, that the Greek language could 
be ever so slightly studied. 

Now if Shakespeare could read Greek 
and Latin, what advantage had the 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 209 

university-bred men over him ? The 
training, the intellectual discipline, it 
will be said. The training is something ; 
but to a mind like Shakespeare's, a 
hint will do more than painful explana- 
tions to another. We all know that self- 
exertion is far more beneficial in educa- 
tion than all learning from teachers ; 
that, in fact, the main effort of all good 
teachers now-a-days is to make scholars 
teach themselves ; and this is what 
Shakespeare did for himself. It' is well 
known that most college students, after 
devoting thousands of hours to the study 
of Greek grammar, drop the whole sub- 
ject forever. They get in at the gate of 
the treasure-house, and then turn and 
leave it without even glancing at its con- 
tents. Shakespeare studied Greek for 
the express purpose of getting into the 
treasure-house and examining its contents. 
He left the grammar to pedagogues ; 
what he wanted was the thought, the 
feeling, the sentiment, the history of' the 
Greeks ; and these, it seems, he got. It 
was not, however, his knowledge of the 



2 1 o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Greek language or literature that enabled 
' him to do what he did ; it was his innate 
genius, his wonderful perception of the 
character of men as he saw them about 
him. The Greeks themselves, who ex- 
celled all others in art, knew no language 
but their own ; and Shakespeare would 
probably have excelled all others had he 
known no language but his own. 

I wish to lay before the reader, in this 
chapter, two remarkable passages from 
good waiters, showing that Shakespeare 
had studied more and travelled farther 
than is generally supposed. The first, 
which is from Mr. T. Spencer Baynes' 
account of Shakespeare, in the *' Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica," is strongly confirm- 
atory of my view of the Poet's early 
career in London ; and the second, from 
Mr. C. A. Brown's book on Shake- 
speare's Sonnets, presents some remark- 
ably strong arguments to show that 
Shakespeare must have seen Italy. 

" His leisure hours during his first year in Lon- 
don," says Mr. Baynes, *' would naturally be devoted 
to continuing his education and equipping himself 
^s fully as possible for bis future, work, It w^s 



POR TkA YED B V tilMSRLF. 2 1 1 

probably during this time, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps 
suggests, that he acquired the working knowledge of 
French and Italian that his writings show he must 
have possessed. And it is perhaps now possible to 
point out the sources whence his knowledge of these 
languages was derived, or at least the master under 
whom he chiefly studied them. The most cele- 
brated and accomplished teacher of French and 
Italian in Shakespeare's day was the resolute John 
Florio, who, after leaving Magdalen College, Ox- 
ford, lived for years in London, engaged in tutorial 
and literary work, and intimately associated with 
eminent men of letters and their noble patrons. 
After the accession of James I., Florio was made 
tutor to Prince Henry, received an appointment 
about the court, became the friend and personal fa- 
vorite of Queen Anne (to whom he dedicated the 
second edition of his Italian dictionary, entitled 
*The World of Words'), and died full of years and 
honors in 1625, having survived Shakespeare nine 
years. Florio had married the sister of Daniel the 
poet, and Ben Jonson presented a copy of * The 
Fox ' to him, with the inscription, ' To his loving 
father and worthy friend Master John Florio, Ben 
Jonson seals this testimony of his friendship and 
love,' Daniel writes a poem of some length in 
praise of his translation of Montaigne, while other 
contemporary poets contribute commendatory verses 
which are prefixed to his other publications. There 
are substantial reasons for believing that Shake- 
speare was also one of Florio's friends, and that 



2 1 2 WILLIAM SBAKESPEARE 

during his early years in London he evinced his 
friendship by yielding for once to the fashions of 
writing this kind of eulogistic verse. 

" Prefixed to Florio's ' Second Fruits/ Professor 
Minto discovered a sonnet so superior and char- 
acteristic that he was impressed with the convic- 
tion that Shakespeare must have written it. The 
internal evidence is in favor of this conclusion, 
while Mr. Minto's critical analysis and comparison 
of its thought and diction with Shakespeare's early 
work tends strongly to support the reality and value 
of the discovery. In his next work, produced four 
years later, Florio claims the sonnet as the work of 
a friend ' who loved better to be a poet than to be 
called one,'* and vindicates it from the indirect 
attack of a hostile critic, H. S., who had also dis- 
paraged the w^ork in which it appeared. There are 
other points of connection between Florio and 
Shakespeare. The only known volume that cer- 
tainly belonged to Shakespeare and contains his 
autograph is Florio's version of Montaigne's Essays 
in the British Museum ; and critics have from 
time to time produced evidence to show that Shake- 
speare must have read it carefully and was well 
acquainted with its contents. Victor Hugo, in a 
powerful critical passage, strongly supports this 
view. The most striking single proof o^ the point 
is Gonzalo's ideal republic in The Temf)est^ which is 
simply a passage from Florio's version turned into 

* Does not this look like the modesty of the Poet, who did 
not care, to see even his greatest works in print ? — W 



POR TRA YED B Y BiMSELF. 2 1 3 

blank verse. Florio and Shakespeare were both,, 
moreover, intimate personal friends of the young 
Earl of Southampton, who, in harmony with his 
generous character and strong literary tastes, was 
the munificent patron of each. Shakespeare, it will 
be remembered, dedicated his Venus afid Adonis 
and his Lucrece to this young nobleman ; and three 
years later, in 1598, Florio dedicated the first edition 
of his Italian dictionary to the Earl in terms that 
almost recall Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare 
had said, in addressing the Earl, 'What I have 
done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being 
part in all I have devoted yours.' And Florio says,' 
' In truth, I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of 
my best knowledge, but of all, yea of more that I 
know or can, to your bounteous lordship, most noble, 
most virtuous, and most honorable Earl of South- ^ 
ampton, in whose pay and patronage I have lived 
some years, to whom I owe and vow the years I 
have to live.' 

" Shakespeare was also familiar with Florio's ear- 
lier works, his * First Fruits ' and * Second Fruits,' 
which were simply carefully prepared manuals for 
the study of Italian, containing an outline bf the, 
grammar, a selection of dialogues in parallel col- 
umns of Italian and English, and longer extracts 
from classical Italian writers in prose and verse.^ 
We have collected various points of indirect evi- 
dence showing Shakespeare's familiarity with these ^ 
manuals, but these being numerous and minute can- 
not be given here. It must suffice to refer, in illus- 



iSE^' 



ii4 



iVllL/AM ^HAiriiSPEAkE 



tration of this point to a single instance — lines lii 
•upraise of Venice which Holofernes gives forth with 
so much unction in Love's Labor's Lost. The ' First 
Fruits ' was published in 1578, and was for some years 
the most popular manual for the study of Italian. It 
is the book which Shakespeare would naturally have 
used in attempting to acquire a knowledge of the 
Italian after his arrival in London ; and on finding 
that the author was the friend of some of his liter- 
ary associates, he would probably have sought his 
acquaintance and secured his personal help. As 
Florio was also a French scholar and habitually 
taught both languages, Shakespeare probably owed 
to him his knowledge of French as well as of Italian. 
If the sonnet is accepted as Shakespeare*s work he 
must have made Florio's acquaintance within a yeaV 
or two after going to London, as in 1591 he appears 
in the character of a personal friend and well-wisher. 
In any case Shakespeare would almost certainly 
have met Florio a few years later at the house of 
Lord Southampton, with whom the Italian scholar 
seems to have resided occasionally. It also ap- 
' pears that he was in the habit of visiting at several 
titled houses, amongst others those of the Earl of 
Bedford and Sir John Harrington. It seems also 
probable that he may have assisted Harrington in 
^ his translation of Ariosto. 

" Another and perhaps even more direct link 
connecting Shakespeare with Florio during his 
early years in London is found in their common 
relation to the family of Lord Derby. In the year 



POkTkA VEi> ^ Y tilMSELR 21^ 

1585 Florio translated a letter of news from 
Rome, giving an account of the sudden death of 
Pope Gregory XIII. and the election of his suc- 
cessor. This translation, published in July, 1585, 
was dedicated ' To the right excellent and honor- 
able lord, Henry, Earl of Derby,' in terms expres- 
sive of Florio's strong personal obligations to the 
Earl and devotion to his service. Three years later, 
on the death of Leicester in 1588, Lord Derby's 
eldest son Ferdinando^ Lord Strange, became the 
patron of Leicester's company of players, which 
Shakespeare had recently joined. The new patron 
must have taken special interest in the company, 
as they soon became (chiefly through his influence) 
great favorites at court, superseding the Queen's 
players, and enjoying something like a practical 
monopoly of royal representations. Shakespeare 
would thus have the opportunity of making Florio's 
acquaintance at the outset of his London career, and 
everything tends to show that he did not miss the 
chance of numbering among his personal friends so 
accomplished a scholar, so alert, energetic, and orig- 
inal a man of letters, as the resolute John Florio." 

After this, the reader will be ready to 
peruse with interest the following re- 
markable passage from a very clever work 
by Charles Armitage Brown ('* Shake- 
speare's Autobiographical Poems," Lon- 
don, 1838, Bohn), proving almost to a 



'2 16 William shakespRare 

demonstration that Shakespeare had 'a 
personal knowledge of Italy and the 
Italians — a passage which is quoted and 
endorsed by no less a scholar than Dr. 
Maginn in his " Shakespeare Studies *' : 

" I proceed," says Mr. Brown, " to show he was 
in Italy from the internal evidence of his works ; 
and I begin with his Taming of the Shrew, where 
the evidence is the strongest. This comedy was en- 
tirely re-written from an older one by an unknown 
hand, with some, but not many, additions to the 
fable. It should first be observed, that in the older 
comedy, which we possess, the scene is laid in 
and near Athens, and that Shakespeare removed 
it to Padua and its neighborhood ; an unnecessary 
change, if he knew no more of one country than of 
the other. The dramatis personce next attract our 
attention. Baptista is no longer erroneously the 
name of a woman, as in Hamlet, but of a man.* All 
the other names, except one, are pure Italian, though 
most of them are adapted to the English ear. 
Biondello, the name of a boy, seems chosen with a 
knowledge of the language — as it signifies a little 
fair-haired fellow. Even the shrew has the Italian 
termination to her name Katharina. The excep- 
tion is Curtis, Petruchio's servant, seemingly the 

* For a reason which the reader will see in the next chapter, 
let him notice that this is another proof that the first draft 
of Hamlei was an early production. 



poutra yjsd bv himself. 



2lf 



housekeeper at his villa ; which, as it is an insigni- 
ficant part, may have been the name of the player; 
but, more probably, it is a corruption of Cortese. 

" Act I., scene i. A public place. For an open 
place, or a square in a city, this is not a home-bred 
expression. It may be accidental ; yet it is a literal 
translation of una piazza picblica^ exactly what was 
meant for the scene. 

" The opening of the comedy, which speaks of 
Lombardy and the university of Padua, might have 
been written by a native Italian : 

*• ' Tranio, since — for the great desire I had 
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts, — 
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy, 
The pleasant garden of great Italy. 

* * * * 

Here let us breathe, and happily institute 
A course of learning, and ingenious studies.' 

" The very next line I found myself involuntarily 
repeating, at the sight of the grave countenances 
within the walls of Pisa : 

*' * Pisa, renowned for grave citizens.' * 

* It could hardly be expected that, while I write, a con- 
firmatory commentary, and from the strangest quarter, should 
turn up on these words ; but so it is. A quarrel lately oc- 
curred in Youghal, arising from a dispute about precedency 
between two ladies at a ball ; and one of the witnesses, a 
travelled gentleman, in his cross-examination, gives the fol- 
lowing opinion of Pisa : " I did not see in the room that 

night ; he is now in Pisa, which I don't think a pleasanter 

place than a court of justice: I think it a d d sickening 

place. It is much too holy for me." This was deposed to 
60 lately as the loth of October, 1839. — Maginn. 



2 1 8 WILLTAM SflAKESP'EA Rk 

They are altogether a grave people, in their de- 
meanor, their history, and their literature, such as it 
is. I never met with the anomaly of a merry Pisan. 
Curiously enough, this line is repeated, word for 
word in the fourth act. Lucentio says, his father 
came * of the Bentivolii.' This is an old Italian 
plural. A mere Englishman would write ' of the 
Bentivolios.' Besides, there was, and is, a branch of 
the Bentivolii in Florence, where Lucentio says he 
was brought up. But these indications, just at the 
commencement of the play, are not of great force. 

"We now come to something more important; 
a remarkable proof of his having been aware of 
the law of the country in respect to the betroth- 
ment of Katharina and Petruchio, of which there is 
not a vestige in the older play. The father gives 
her hand to him, both parties consenting, before two 
witnesses, who declare themselves such to the act. 
Such a ceremony is as indissoluble as that of mar- 
riage, unless both parties should consent to annul 
it. The betrothment takes place in due form, ex- 
actly as in many of Goldoni's comedies : 

Baptista. Give me your hands ; 

God send you joy, Petruchio ! 'tis a match. 

Grernio and Tranio. Amen ! say we ; we will be witnesses. 

Instantly Petruchio addresses them as ' father and 
wife ' ; because, from that moment, he possesses the 
legal power of a husband over her, saving that of tak- 
ing her to his own house. Unless the betrothment 
is understood in this light, we cannot account for 



POK TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 2 1 9 

the father's so tamely yielding afterwards to Petru- 
chio's whim of going in his 'mad attire ' with her to 
the church. Authority is no longer with the father; 
in vain he hopes and requests the bridegroom will 
change his clothes ; Petruchio is peremptory in his 
lordly will and pleasure, which he could not possi- 
bly be, without the previous Italian betrothment. 

"Padua lies between Verona and Venice, at a 
suitable distance from both, for the conduct of the 
comedy. Petruchio, after being securely betrothed, 
sets off for Venice, the very place for finery, to buy 
* rings and things, and fine array ' for the wedding ; 
and, when married, he takes her to his country- 
house in the direction of Verona, of which city he 
is a native. All this is complete, and in marked op- 
position to the worse than mistakes in the Iwo Gen- 
tlemen of Verona, which was written when he knew 
nothing \vhatever of the country. 

" The rich old Gremio, when questioned respect- 
insr the dower he can assure to Bianca, boasts, as a 
primary consideration, of his richly furnished house : 

First, as you know, my house within the city 

Is i-ichly furnished with plate and gold ; 

Basins and ewers, to lave her dainty hands ; 

My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry : 

In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns, 

In cypress chests my arras, counterpoints, 

Costly apparel, tents, and canopies ; 

Fine linen, Turkey cushions 'bossed with pearl. 

Valance of Venice gold in needlework ; 

Pewter and brass, and all things that belong 

To house, or housekeeping. 



220 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

" Lady Morgan, in her * Italy,' says (and my own 
observation corroborates her account): ' There is 
not an article here described, that I have not found 
in some one or other' of the palaces of Florence, 
Venice, and Genoa — the mercantile republics of 
Italy — even to the * Turkey cushions 'bossed with 
pearl.' She then adds, * This is the knowledge of 
genius, acquired by the rapid perception and intui- 
tive appreciation,' etc., never once suspecting that 
Shakespeare had been an eye-witness of such furni- 
ture. For my part, unable to comprehend the in- 
tuitive knowledge of genius, in opposition to her 
ladyship's opinion, I beg leave to quote Dr. John- 
son : *■ Shakespeare, however favored by nature, 
could impart only what he had learned.' With this 
text as our guide, it behooves us to point out how 
he could obtain such an intimate knowledge of 
facts, without having been, like Lady Morgan, an 
eye-witness to them. 

" In addition to these instances, the whole com- 
edy bears an Italian character, and seems written 
as if the author had said to his friends, ' Now I will 
give you a comedy, built on Italian manners, neat 
as I myself have imported.' Indeed, did I not 
know its archetype, with the scene in Athens, I 
might suspect it to be an adaptation of some un- 
known Italian play, retaining rather too many local 
allusions for the English stage. 

" Some may argue that it was possible for him 
to learn all this from books of travels now lost, or 
in conversation with travellers ; but my faith recoils 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 22 1 

from so bare a possibility, when the belief that he 
saw what he described is, in every point of view, 
without difficulty, and probable. Books and con- 
versation may do much for an author ; but, should 
he descend to particular descriptions, or venture to 
speak of manners and customs intimately, is it pos- 
sible he should not once fall into error with no 
better instruction ? An objection has been made, 
imputing an error, in Gremio's question, ' Are the 
rushes strewed ? ' But the custom of strewing 
rushes in England belonged also to Italy ; this may 
be seen in old authors, and their very word ghmcare, 
now out of use, is a proof of it. English Christian 
names, incidentally introduced, are but translations 
of the same Italian names, as Catarina is called 
Katharine and Kate ; and, if they were not, comedy 
may well be allowed to take a liberty of that na- 
ture." 

To which Dr. Maginn adds : 

"This, certainly, is ingenious, as also are the ar- 
guments drawn by Mr. Brown from Othello and the 
Merchant of Venice ; and I understand that a later 
lady-traveller in Italy than Lady Morgan coincides 
in the same view of the case ; and she is a lady * 
who ought to know 'How to Observe.' At all 
events, there is nothing improbable in assuming that 
Shakespeare, or any other person of cultivated mind 
or easy fortune— and he was both — should have vis- 

* Harriet Martin eau. 



222 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ited the famed and fashionable land of Italy. There 
was much more energy and action among the liter- 
erary men — among men in general, indeed, of the 
days of Elizabeth, than of the last century; when 
making the * grand tour,' as they called it, was con- 
sidered an undertaking to be ventured on only by a 
great lord or squire, who looked upon it as a formal 

matter of his life * In great Eliza's golden 

time,' the nation was not only awake, but vigorous 
in the rude strength of manly activity. The spirit 
of sea-adventure was not dead while Drake and his 
brother ' shepherds of the ocean ' lived ; and an en- 
thusiastic mind of that period would think far less, 
and make far less talk, about a voyage to the Spanish 
Main, than Johnson did, near a couple of centuries 
afterward, of jolting to the North of Scotland. The 
activity of Shakespeare or his contemporaries is not 
to be judged of by the sloth of their ancestors 'upon 
town,' or ' in the literary world.' It is to me evident 
that Shakespeare had been at sea, from his vivid 
description of maritime phenomena, and his knowl- 
edge of the management of a vessel, whether in 
calm or in storm." 

Considering, therefore, how little we 
know of the life of the Poet, and how 
much he knew of the world', what scenes 
may he not have witnessed, what peoples 
may he not have seen, and what subjects 
rnay he not have studied, that we wot 



POR TkA YED B Y HIMSELP, 223 

not of! His friend the Earl of South- 
ampton was captain of one of the princi- 
pal ships in the expedition against Spain 
in 1597, and afterwards had the command 
of a squadron under Essex. May not 
the Poet have accompanied him on one 
of his voyages ? His knowledge of the 
Continent is too marvellously exact to 
have been learned at second hand. 
Take, for instance, the Prince's, or rath- 
er King Henry's description of French 
ground. The first thing that strikes one, 
on making a journey from England to 
France, is the difference in the general 
aspect of French soil, which looks dull 
and dark compared with that of England. 
Now mark how King Henry describes 

it; 

If we be hindered, 

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood 
Discolor. 

I have been in France, and I know no 
word that describes its soil so exactly as 
this. Now which is more probable, that 
the Poet's knowledge came from reading 
travellers' books, or that it came from 



224 



WILL/AM SHAKESPEARE 



actual observation ? So sure as Prince 
Henry had seen France with his own 
eyes, so sure had Shakespeare. Why, 
France is so near to England, Its coast 
may be descried with the naked eye 
from various parts of the Island ! And 
yet Mr. Donnelly thinks that the Poet 
never even saw the sea ! 

In view, too, of what Mr. Spencer T. 
Baynes shows of Shakespeare's early 
career and linguistic studies In London, 
and of Ben Jonson's testimony as to his 
studiousness and knowledge even of the 
dead languages, hov/ absurd, nay how 
scandalous It Is for Mr. Donnelly to 
speak of him as an Ignoramus, a drunken 
sot, etc., etc.! 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELP, 



22^ 



CHAPTER XV. 

CONTEMPORARY REFERENCES TO SHAKE- 
SPEARE — HIS HOME-LIFE. 

THERE was no critical literature of 
the stage In Shakespeare's time ; 
but there are some references to him 
and his plays by his contemporaries that 
are exceedingly interesting. Among 
these is that of the dying dramatist 
Greene, who, when he offered his ad- 
vice and warning to his literary fellow- 
workers, Peele, Lodge, Marlowe, and 
the rest, had nothing but a sneering 
allusion for Shakespeare. Fortunately, 
the ground of his dislike is obvious ; 
and this makes his allusion all the more 
Important. It occurs in his ** Groats- 
worth of Wit bought with a Million 
of Repentance," published in 1592. 

Shakespeare was at this time a dif- 
15 



226 WlLLiAM SilAK^SPEARB 

ferent sort of man from Greene and 
the other roysterers ; he had got beyond 
roystering ; he had sounded the depths 
of folly ; and having discovered its unpro- 
fitableness, had now become an earnest 
student, a close thinker and hard worker. 
Diligently yet quietly and unostenta- 
tiously laboring In his profession, he had 
climbed so high and gained such a prom- 
inent place in public favor, that he excited 
the envy of poor Greene. "Yes, trust 
them not," says he ; " for there is an up- 
start crow, beautified with our feathers, 
who, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a 
player's hide, supposes he is as well able 
to bombast out a blank verse as the best 
of you ; and being an absolute Johannes 
Factotum, is in his own conceit the only 
Shake-scene in the country." The ex- 
pression " with a tiger's heart wrapped 
in a player's hide " is a parody of the line, 

Oh tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide ! 

which is found in the Duke of York's 
speech in the Third Part of Henry the 
Sixth, 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



227 



Ah, indeed ! he was a Factotum, was 
he ? Well, that shows how skilful, how 
industrious, how willing and useful he 
was ! He could not only act and instruct 
others how to act, but he could write ; 
he could compose plays that were better 
liked and more successful than even those 
of the learned dramatists like Greene and 
his fellows. Having become the leading 
mind in the companies with which he 
was connected, the actors instinctively 
gave way to his superior power and 
knowledge, and confided all to him. 
No doubt he gave them many a useful 
hint in their art ; no doubt his manner 
was as gentle as his genius was great 
and his knowledge extensive ; no doubt 
they liked his assistance in all their 
efforts ; for though some, like Greene, 
were envious of him, we do not find that 
he had a single enemy among those that 
knew him intimately. Like his own Bru- 
tus, 

His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, 

And say to all the world, This was a man ! 



228 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Giants are always kind and consid- 
erate toward those endowed with less 
strencrth than themselves ; and Shake- 
speare treated all his associates, even 
those of inferior character and capacity, 
v/ith consideration, with tolerance and 
liberality. 

But Greene did not like him. It seems 
he had no personal acquaintance with the 
Poet, else he would have addressed him 
in the same familiar way in which he 
addressed his other acquaintances. He 
knew him only by his growing reputa- 
tion, and this excited his envy, especially 
when he found he was not one of the 
university set. This successful dramatist 
had not, like Greene and his compan- 
ions, studied at the university ; he had 
not passed seven years within the classic 
precincts of Cambridge or Oxford ; he 
had not come to town with his patri- 
mony in his pocket, and run through it 
in a course .of dissipation and profligacy ; 
he had not outraged all decency, and 
put himself in a fair way of dying in a 
hospital. No ; he v/as quite a -different 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 22g 

sort of man from this ; he avoided brawls 
and quarrels; wrought steadily and so- 
berly at his calling ; studied all he could 
lay hands on ; noted carefully every- 
thing he saw ; cultivated the acquain- 
tance of the nobler sort, and observed 
the coarser kind of people without be- 
coming one of them ; became the com- 
panion of gentlemen, men of rank, talent 
and character, wherever he found them ; 
acquired wealth and reputation in his pro- 
fession ; relieved his father and family 
from debt ; bought the best house in his 
native town ; and lived altogether in a 
higher and nobler sphere than that of 
Greene, Marlowe, Peele, and the rest. 
Oh, no, poor Greene ; he was not one of 
your sort ; and you could not possibly 
like him. 

" Upstart crow ! " What a world of 
meaning there is in that phrase ! It eon- 
tains a whole volume of evidence that 
Shakespeare was what he has ever been 
represented to be, one who rapidly 
worked himself up from a low station to 
one of the highest. Tis true, O Greene, 



230 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



he had not, Hke you and your confreres, 
taken his degree at any learned univer- 
sity ; tis true, he had *' small Latin and 
less Greek " ; but he had studied in a 
far greater university than either, that in 
which genius learns most : he had stud- 
ied in the University of the World, and 
learned all about human nature ; and in 
this university he had taken his degree, 
the highest degree yet conferred upon 
man or woman, that of Master Mind in 
Literature. In this university, his teach- 
ers were the men and women who lived 
and toiled, loved and hated, fought and 
suffered by his side, from every one of 
whom he had learned something ; and 
with all his learning and ability, O 
Greene, he displayed one noble trait 
which, with you and your companions, 
was conspicuous by its absence : he was 
noted for modesty, for an humble opin- 
ion of his own merits, and for kind appre- 
ciation of the merits of others. 

There is one other playwright of the 
day, Thomas Nash, a friend of Greene's, 
who makes a similar sneering allusion to 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



231 



Shakespeare. No doubt they had both, 
many a time and oft, m their private 
conferences, expressed their contempt of 
this " upstart crow." This time it is not 
by a play on his name, but by a play on 
the name of one of his dramas ; and 
the whole bitterness of the sarcasm, like 
Greene's, lies in its implication of the 
Poet's want of an education. It occurs 
in an epistle to the Gentlemen Students 
of both Universities, prefixed to Greene's 
Arcadia: ** It is a common practice now- 
adays, among a sort of shifting com- 
panions that run through every art and 
thrive by none, to leave the trade of 
Noverinty whereto they were born, and 
busy themselves with the endeavors of 
art, that could scarcely Latinize their 
neck-verse if they should have need ; yet 
English Seneca, read by candle-light, 
yields many good sentences, as ' Blood is 
a beggar,' and so forth; and if you en- 
treat him in a frosty morning, he will 
afford you whole Hamlets^ I should say 
handfuls, of tragical speeches." 

Let the reader remember that hamlet 



232 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



means a small village or townlet, and that 
Noverint is the first word in the Latin 
deeds of those times, equivalent to our 
modern phrase, Know all men. The 
''frosty morning" is evidently an allu- 
sion to the well-known scene that thus 
begins : 

Ham. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold. 
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. 

There are a hundred things that point 
to the probability that the Poet had, be- 
fore he left Stratford, studied law, or 
passed some years, at least, in the office 
of an attorney. As his father, for in- 
stance, was always connected in some 
official capacity with the town's affairs, 
we may readily conceive he would be 
glad to have his eldest son know some- 
thing of legal transactions, with which he 
had so much to do, and thus enjoy the 
benefit of his assistance in business and 
official affairs. 

Nobody can read Hamlet without be- 
ing convinced that the author must, at 
some time, have had some connection 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSEIF, 233 

with legal business, and it is probably all 
the more full of law-phrases and legal 
allusions from the fact that the author 
had but recently emerged from a law 
office. Hence the reference to him as a 
Novermt, 

*' Blood is a beggar " may have refer- 
ence to such sentences as these in 
Hamlet : 

Your fat king, and your lean beggar, is but variable 

service. 
To show you how a king may go a progress through 

the guts of a beggar. 

If Nash had had the printed play 
before him, he would have quoted more 
correctly ; but he evidently cited what he 
thought he had Aea7^d the actors utter. It 
must not 'be forgotten that the play was 
not printed at this time, and that Nash 
quoted what he thought he had heard. 

Nay, more : this phrase, '* could scarcely 
Latinize their neck-verse if they should 
have need," contains probably a deeper 
and more deadly thrust. Neck-verse 
means the verse formerly read by a crim- 
inal, claiming benefit of clergy, to save 
himself from being hanged. Now this 



234 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



may have had reference to Shakespeare's 
deer-stealing escapade, and his flight 
from the magisterial vengeance of Sir 
Thomas Lucy, justice of the peace. It 
implies, therefore, that the '* shifting 
companion " was an unlettered criminal, 
a deer-stealer and fugitive from justice, 
who " could scarcely Latinize his neck- 
verse if he should have need!" Shake- 
speare may have been a Noverint or 
law-clerk at the time of his flight, if 
flight it was, and this makes the allusion 
all the more galling. If it were on ac- 
count of this passage, I should not at 
all be surprised at Shakespeare's taking 
offence at it, as he did at Greene's allu- 
sion, which seems to have been attributed 
also to Nash. 

In order to understand this, let us 
return for a moment to Greene. It 
was Henry Chettle who published, some 
time after the author's death, Greene's 
book, entitled "A Groatsworth of Wit, 
bought with a Million of Repentance;" 
and it seems that Shakespeare and Mar- 
lowe took offence at the publication, 
and demanded an apology, which Chet- 



PORTkAYMD BY mMSBL^, 



n% 



tie made, in a tract entitled "Kind- 
Heart's Dream," published not long 
after, in these words : 

" About three months since died Mr. Robert 
Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' 
hands : among others, his Groatsworth of Wit, in 
which a letter, written to divers playmakers, is offen- 
sively by one or two of them taken ; — and, because 
on the dead they cannot be avenged, they wilfully 
forge into their conceits a living author, and after 
tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on 
me. . . . With neither of them that take offence 
was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not 
if I never be. The other, whom at that time I did 
not so much spare, as since J wish I had, .... for 
that [him] I am as sorry as if the original fault had 
been my fault ; because myself have seen his demeanor 
no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. 
Besides, divers of worship have reported his upright- 
ness OF DEALING, WHICH ARGUES HIS HONESTY, and 

his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art 

I protest, it was all Greene's, not mine, nor 

Master Nash's, as some have unjustly affirmed." 

All this looks very much like an apolo- 
gy for an unjust and malicious charge ; 
and it certainly seems complete. Chettle 
had meanwhile made the acquaintance of 
Shakespeare, and had discovered how un- 
just and ungenerous that charge was. 



§^* WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Poor Nash and Greene ! So you 
thought, like some recent critics, that 
the first requisite for the production of 
a good play, is a classic education ! that 
none should '' busy themselves with the 
endeavors of art " who had not received 
a training In the classic languages ! O 
Envy ! how blind thou art to genius, as 
well as to merit ! Love sure never was 
so blind to imperfection as thou art to 
perfection ! What a chance for a glori- 
ous, grateful immortality hast thou, Nash, 
lost, as well as thy boon companion 
Greene ! And instead of being looked 
upon with admiration, nay with respect 
approaching to veneration, as the per- 
sonal friends and admirers of Shake- 
speare, ye are now regarded as poor, pit- 
iful, spiteful derlders of the immortal 
bard! 

Mr. Charles Armltage Brown expresses 
regret that Shakespeare had not more 
such enemies ; for if he had, we should, 
he thinks, have learned by their attacks 
something more of him and his affairs. 
Perhaps we should ; but it Is pleasant to 



PORTRAYEl) BY nlMSRLF. 



23; 



know that he was almost universally 
loved, and that he had few or no enemies. 
Chettle was doubtless, like Falstaff with 
the Prince, " bewitched with his com- 
pany," and very probably he gave him 
"medicines to make him love him!"* 
Let me say a word here about 
Shakespeare's home-life. Mr. Black, in 
his excellent novel, " Judith Shake- 
speare," represents the Poet as an 

* I am astonished that Mr. Phillipps should think, from cer- 
tain references to the play of Hamlet as early as 1589, that 
these must concern an earlier Hamlet than that of Shake- 
speare. This reference of Nash's is among them, and the 
others are passages from the play, which are thus stated : 
" ' There are things called whips in store,' spoken by Hamlet, 
and a notice of a trout with four legs by one of the other 
characters. Also a very telling speech by the ghost in the 
two words, Hamlet, revenge ! " Now, how easy it w^ould be 
for any spectator or listener to the play (for we must not for 
get that Nash simply saw the plaj^ not read it), to confound 
Hamlet's famous speech beginning 

" For who would bear the whips and scorns of time," 
with such an expression as " There are whips in store ! " And 
as to the "trout wnth four legs," it probably comes from the 
camel that is turned into a whale : 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in shape of 
a camel ? 

Pol. Bv the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. 
Ham. Methinks, it is like a weasel. 
Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 
Ham, Or like a whale ? 



238 mLLTAM SBAJCESFEAkM 

amiable and much-loved father; living 
and working entirely for his wife and 
children, and coming home at stated pe- 
riods laden with presents and messages 
for his family and friends. I think he 
is right. There is not a particle of evi- 
dence to show that he was not well- 
mated in his union with Anne Hatha- 
way, and much to show that he was. 

Pol. Very like a whale. 

Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and by. 

And does not the ghost thus incite Hamlet to revenge : 

Ghost. List, list, O list ! 

If thou didst ever thy dear father love, — 

Ham. O God ! 

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder ! 

Ham. Murder? 

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; 
But this, most foul, strange and unnatural. 

Ham. Haste me to know't ; that I with wings as swift 
As meditation, or the thoughts of love, 
May sweep to my revenge ! 

The story or history of Hamlet was familiar enough before 
Shakespeare's play was written ; but no other play of that 
name has come down to us. The first draft of Hamlet 
was in existence long before the perfected copy, first pub- 
lished in 1604, and described in its title-page as "enlarged 
to almost as much again as it was." Shakespeare was, in 
1589, the twelfth among sixteen shareholders in the Black- 
friars' Theater, and it is obvious that the first draft of Hamlet 
had been written and acted by this time. 



PORTRA YED B V ///A/SELF. 



239 



His wife and daughters '' did earnestly 
desire to be laid in the same grave 
with him," according to the evidence 
of the aged clerk, who, in 1693, showed 
the church at Stratford to Dowdall. 
'' And the pleasing memorial of filial 
affection," says Hailiwell, '' in the chan- 
cel of Stratford church, a monument 



There is no doubt, therefore, that this play, first drafted in 
the early years of his connection with the theater, was en- 
tirely rewritten and remodelled tw^enty years afterwards, when 
the author's mind was in its ripest stage. Byron wrote his 
best j)oem, Childe Harold, at twenty-four; Sheridan wrote 
The Rivals and the School for Scandal at about the same acre ; 
and Shakespeare was twenty-five when he wrote the first draft 
oi Hamlet. To show the reader how Shakespeare worked, and 
the difference between his first and his second draft of a pi ay, 
let me quote a few lines from Love's Labor'' s Lost, which is 
also supposed to be one of his earliest productions. In that 
play these three lines occur in the first draft : 

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive ; 
They are the ground, the books, the academes, 
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire: 

which are thus gracefully expanded in the second : 
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive; 
Theyspai-kle still the right Promethean fire; 
They are the books, the arts, the academes, 
That show, contain, and nourish all the world ; 
Else none at all in aught proves excellent. 

This, may, therefore, give us a good idea of Hamlet 
before it was "enlarged to almost as much again as it was." 



240 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

raised by her daughter, tells us how 
revered was Anne Shakespeare's mem- 
ory, and plainly teaches us to infer she 
possessed *as much virtue as could die.' 
Such a being," he continues, " must have 
lived happily with the gentle Shake- 
speare." Besides, had he not been 
highly esteemed, he would not, in 
that age, have received, as an actor, 
such uncommonly respectful interment. 
This is evidence enouorh that notwith- 

o 

standing ''the second-best bed " and all 
that, he lived happily with his wife. If 
he did not care for her, would he have 
invested his very first earnings in buying 
the best house in the town for her resi- 
dence ? We find him making constant 
journeys to and from Stratford, repeat- 
edly buying property in that town, and 
finally retiring permanently there as 
soon as he had acquired sufficient means 
to live comfortably. '' Let it be borne 
in mind," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, 
" that Shakespeare's occupation debarred 
him from the possibility of his sustaining 
even to an approach to a continuous 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 24 1 

domestic life ; so that when his known 
attachment to Stratford is taken into con- 
sideration, it seems all but certain that 
his wife and children were but waiting 
there under economical circumstances, 
perhaps with his parents in Henley- 
street, until he could provide them with 
a comfortable residence of their own. 
Every particular that is known indicates 
that he admitted no disgrace in the irre- 
sponsible persecution which occasioned 
his retreat to London, and that he per- 
sistently entertained the wish to make 
Stratford his and his family's only per- 
manent home." We may be sure his 
heart was always in Stratford ; and amid 
all the varied scenes in which he took 
part in London, the different characters 
he played, and the numerous persons 
with whom he became associated, his 
heart ever turned to that little town 
in Warwickshire 

Where were his young barbarians all at play ; 
Where was their Dacian mother ; 

while he, their sire, was called hence to 
16 



242 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 

make an English holiday for the sover- 
eign, the dignitaries, and tjie people of 
the day. 

Let any man who has wife and child, 
and who is obliged to go to some dis- 
tant city to earn a living ; let him imag- 
ine for a moment, if he have a human 
heart and natural feelings, whether he 
too would not do all he could, work, 
strive, hope, fear,^ dream, and exert all 
his powers, with the view of returning to 
the loved ones with the means of minis- 
tering to their comfort, and pleasing 
them in all things. 

I have not a doubt, that from the first 

day in which Shakespeare set foot in 

London, he looked forward to returning 

to Stratford and living there at ease with 

his wife and children, his parents, friends 

and neighbors. 

In all his wanderings round this world of care, 
In all his griefs — and God had given his share- 
He still had hopes, his latest hours to crown^ 
Amid these humble bowers to lay him down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose : 
lie still had hopes, — for pride attends u§ still, — 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 243 

Amid the swains to show his book-learned skill ; 
Around his fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all he felt and all he saw ; 
And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
He still had hopes, his long vexations past, 
Here to return, — and die at home at last ! 

Such is the language and such are the 
feeHngs of a poet. Indeed, not only his 
wife and children, but his father and 
mother— that dear mother, to whom he 
undoubtedly owed so much — were still 
living in Stratford, his father till 1601 
and his mother as late as 1608 ; and it 
is natural that, after all the exciting 
scenes and tumultuous experiences of 
the London play-houses, he should turn, 
for rest and refreshment, to the quiet 
scenes amidst which he was reared, and 
to the friends of his youth and early 
manhood. Like the English poet al- 
ready quoted, with whom he had much 
in common, he could exclaim : 

Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, 
My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee ; 
Still to my kindred turns, with ceaseless pain. 
And drags, at each remove, a lengthening chain. 



244 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE SOURCES OF THE PLAY THE POET 

AND THE KING. 

THE First and Second Part of 
Henry IV. being essentially one 
play, only too long for one representa- 
tion, I shall In future speak of it as 
such. Unlike some others of his plays, 
there is no question as to Shakespeare's 
sole authorship of this play. It is true, 
there was before his time an old play 
called Henry the Fifth — a play which in- 
cludes the events of his three plays, the 
First and the Second Part of Henry IV. 
and Henry V. — but Shakespeare seems 
to have been indebted to hardly a line 
in it for his work. Mr. Hudson thus 
speaks of the old play : '' The Poet can 
scarce be said to have built upon it or 
borrowed from it at all, any further than 
the taking of the above mentioned 



POk TkA YED B Y HIMSELF. 24^ 

names. The play is, indeed, in every 
way a most wretched, worthless per- 
formance, being altogether a mass of 
stupid vulgarity ; at once vapid and 
vile ; without the least touch of wit in 
the comic parts, or of poetry in the 
tragic ; the verse being such only to the 
eye ; Sir John Oldcastle being a dull, 
low-minded profligate, uninformed with 
the slightest felicity of thought or hu- 
mor ; the Prince an irredeemable com- 
pound of the ruffian, the blackguard 
and the hypocrite, and their companions 
the fitting seconds of such principals : so 
that, to have drawn upon it for any por- 
tion or element of Shakespeare's Henry 
IV,, were much the same as 'extracting 
sunbeams from cucumbers.' " 

The play, therefore, is all his own, and 
he made full use of the freedom thus af- 
forded him as to the nature of the char- 
acters he was to draw. I should not be 
surprised if, in the first draft he made 
of the play, he set down the real names 
of the persons he had in mind, and 
changed them afterwards for the stage. 



246 mZlIAM SflAKESPEARE 

I am supported In this view by the re- 
markable discoveries of Halliwell, who 
shows that many of the names in these 
plays are taken from those of people 
living In Warwickshire in Shakespeare's 
time. It looks as if Shakespeare, after 
v/rlting the play with real names, let the 
names of the minor characters stand, 
and changed only those of the chief 
ones. Halliwell finds In the Stratford 
records the names of Bardolf, Fluellen, 
Davy (Jones), Perkes, Peto, Partlett, 
Sly, Heme, Home, Brome, Page, and 
Ford ; and he thinks it curious and 
worthy of remark that " he condescended 
to employ in his plays the appellations 
of persons with whom he was probably 
familiar In his youth." But they were 
the real persons as well as the real 
names. Why shouldn't they be ? 

'V In whatever he has of historical fact," 
says Mr. Hudson, " Shakespeare's main 
authority was Hollnshed. And in this 
case it is hard to say whether the Poet 
have showed a more creative or a more 
learned spirit ; there being perhaps no 



POkTRA YEB BY tilMSELP. 



H7 



other work to be named which, in the 
same compass, unites so great freedom 
of invention with so rich a fund of his- 
torical matter. Nor is it easy to decide 
whether there be more even of historical 
truth in what he created or in what he 
borrowed ; for, as Hallam justly observes, 
' what he invented is as truly English, as 
truly historical, in the large sense of 
moral history, as what he read.' " 

It is worthy of remark, that the whole 
of the first scene in Henry V,, wherein 
the conversion of the king, his wonderful 
knowledge and ability, are described by 
the Archbishop, is omitted in the quarto 
editions of the play, which were the only 
editions published in the Poet's lifetime, 
and appears only in the folio edition of 
1623. So that it looks as if this quiet 
and significant description of the charac- 
ter of his hero, his self-presentation of 
the man, were considered too tame for 
the boards, and left only for the closet. 
Or was there, perhaps, some other rea- 
son for its omission ? — It is also to be 
noted, that the king's speech to the 



248 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARJk 



Archbishop, deprecating war, expressing 
great anxiety as to a rightful cause, and 
showing a fearful apprehension of its 
dire accompaniments, is greatly short- 
ened in the quartos. 

Some reader may say, ** Is it not im- 
probable that Shakespeare, an humble 
man of letters, should have selected a 
prince as one in whom to represent him- 
self?" If there was any man in Eng- 
land, in this Elizabethan era, in whose 
breast there beat an heroic spirit, in 
whose mind there lived the most exalt- 
ed thoughts and high-hearted hopes ; if 
there was any man in that age accus- 
tomed to high thinking and gentle living, 
a born prince of men, it was William 
Shakespeare, the greatest of poets. 
Why should not this man with the chiv- 
alric name, Shake-spear, a patriotic Eng- 
lishman, through whose veins flowed 
some of the best blood in England, see 
in England's heroic king a man similar 
to himself, loving home, peace, and social 
life, fond of wit, humor, and song, yet ca- 
pable of heroic feats In war as Vv^ell as 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



249 



of genial and kindly conduct in peace? 
Why should he not see in this king, 
with whose personal history he had such 
large sympathy, a man who had under- 
gone an experience similar to his own, 
and whose character looked like his 
own ? What is a king more than an- 
other man except that he is surrounded 
by ceremony ? Why should he not im- 
agine himself in his place, acting and 
speaking as he had acted and spoken, 
laughing and jesting as he had laughed 
and jested ? He obviously saw in this 
Prince's history a rich field, not only for 
wit and humor, but for stately behavior, 
noble thinking, and high-hearted action ; 
a field in which he was personally ac- 
quainted, and in which he found himself 
completely at home. Besides, kings 
were not, in those days, so far removed 
from the people as they are now. They 
often took part in public games and 
sports, visited the haunts of the common 
people, and lived and loved like other 
men. '' I am glad thou canst speak 
no better English," says the king, 



2SO 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



in the wooing scene with the Princess 
Katharine, " for if thou couldst, thou 
wouldst find me such a plain king that 
thou wouldst think I had sold my farm 
to buy my crown." 

Listen to what the Poet puts into the 
king's mouth when he, incognito, meets 
two or three of his own soldiers, the 
night before the battle of Agincourt : 

King. Though I speak it to you, 1 think the king 
is but a man, as I am. The violet smells to him as it 
doth to me ; the elements show to him as they do 
to me ; all his senses have but human conditions : 
his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears 
but a man ; and though his affections are higher 
mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop 
with the same wing. Therefore, when he sees 
reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be 
of the same relish as ours are. 

Could Shakespeare not stand for such 
a man ? Does he not here show that he 
was man first, king afterwards ? He was 
not a god, but a man ; and being more 
man than most kings, being nearer the 
people than most princes, the Poet came 
all the more close to him, and had all the 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



251 



more resemblance to him. This view Is 
further confirmed by what follows. One 
of these soldiers, who does not know It 
is the king, challenges him to single com- 
bat after the battle ; and, after exchang- 
ing gloves as a means of subsequent rec- 
ognition, the king leaves him, and thus 
breaks out in a soliloquy on kings and 
ceremony : 

King. Upon the king ! let us our lives, our souls 
Our debts, our careful wives, our children, and 
Our sins, lay on the king ! — we must bear all. 
O, hard condition ! twin-born with greatness, 
Subject to the breath of every fool. 
Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing! 
What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect. 
That private men enjoy ! 

And what have kings, that privates have not too, 
Save ceremony, save general ceremony ? 
And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? 
What kind of god art thou, that sufferest more 
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers ? 
What are thy rents ? what are thy comings-in? 
O Ceremony, show^ me but thyworth 1 
What is thy soul but adulation ? 
Art thou aught else but place, degree afid form, 
Creating awe and fear in other men ? 
Wherein thou art less happy, being feared^ 
Than they in fearing. 



252 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, 

But poisoned flattery ? O ! be sick, great greatness. 

And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure. 

Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out 

With titles blown from adulation ? 

Will it give place to flexure and low bending ? 

Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's 

knee, 
Command the health of it ? No, thou proud dream, 
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose. — 
I am a king, that find thee ; and I know 
'Tis not the balm, the scepter, and the ball, 
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, 
The inter-tissued robe of gold and pearl, 
The farced title running 'fore the king, 
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp 
That beats upon the high shore of this world-r— 
No, n6t all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony, 
Not all these, laid in bed majestical. 
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave 
Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind, 
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; 
Never sees horrid Night, the child of hell ; 
But, like a lackey, from sun rise to set. 
Sweats in the eve of Phoebus, and all night 
Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn, 
Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse ; 
And follows so the ever-running year 
With profitable labor to his grave : 
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, 
Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, 



POKTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



253 



Hath the fore-hand and vantage of a king. 
The slave, a member of the country's peace, 
Enjoys it; but, in gross brain, little wots 
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, 
Whose hours the peasant best advantages. 

Who will say that the imagination that 
conceived this could not put himself in 
the place of a king? Who will say that 
this does not look like the Poet acting 
and thinking in the character of a king? 
Perhaps no man ever realized so fully 
all the troubles, cares, sorrows, anxieties 
and duties of a king ; perhaps no man 
ever understood so perfectly the happi- 
ness as well as the miseries of a peasant ; 
and perhaps no man ever gave such 
noble expression to them. How com- 
pletely he entered into the thoughts and 
feelings of King Henry ! how completely 
he identified himself with him and his 
cares ! Reading these speeches, one 
would think he must have been a king 
himself to speak in so kingly a way. 
But these are the thoughts of the Poet, 
picturing to himself how he would have 
spoken and acted in the place and con- 



254 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ditlon of a king ; or working out a life 
that he imagines himself to have lived. 
Probably no king ever addressed his 
troops with more hearty sympathy and 
true fellow-feeling than King Henry ad- 
dressed his at Agincourt. He felt, what 
few kings ever feel, that he was one of 
them, an Englishman among English- 
men, and about to risk his life, like 
them, for his country's honor and glory : 

For forth he goes, and visits all his host, 
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, 
And calls them broihers, friends, and countrymen. 

Did Napoleon, or Bliicher, or Gustavus 
Adolphus, or Washington, ever render 
his troops such tender homage 1 Could 
anything be nobler than his declaration : 

For he, to-day, that sheds his blood with me, 
Shall be my brother : be he ne'er so vile, 
This day shall gentle his condition. 

Such is the noble and gentle spirit that 
breathes in the speech he makes to West- 
moreland and his army just before the 
battle ; w^hich, as it is perhaps the most 
celebrated of all his speeches, must be 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



2S5 



given entire, and with which we take our 
leave of this most interesting, most ami- 
able, and most glorious prince, whose ca- 
reer and character we have shown good 
reasons for regarding as reflecting those 
of the Poet himself. In reading it, let 
the reader call to mind that this is the 
man of whom it was said,« *' List his dis- 
course of war, and you shall hear a fear- 
ful battle rendered you in music ; " and 
remember that the same character is kept 
up to the end. 

West. O ! that we now had here 
{Enter the King.) 
But one ten thousand of those men in England 
That do no work to-day ! 

King. What's he that wishes so ? 
My cousin Westmoreland ? — No, my fair cousin ; 
If we are marked to die, we are enough 
To do our country loss ; and if to live, 
The fewer men, the greater share of honor. 
God's will ! I pray thee, wish not one man more. 
By Jove ! I am not covetous for gold ; 
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost ; 
It yearns me not if men my garments wear ; 
Such outward things dwell not in my desires : 
But if it be a sin to covet honor, 
I am the most offending soul alive. 



2 5 6 WILL/AM SHAKESPEARE 

No, 'faith, my coz, wish not a man from England : 

God's peace ! I would not lose so great an honor, 

As one man more, methinks, would share from me. 

For the best hope I have. O ! do not wish one more : 

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, 

That he which hath no stomach to this fight, 

Let him depart ; his passport shall be made. 

And crowns for convoy put into his purse : 

We would not die in that man's company 

That fears his fellowship to die with us. 

This day is called — the feast of Ciispian : 

He that outlives this dav, and comes safe home, 

Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named. 

And rouse him at the name of Crispian, 

He that shall live this day, and see old age, 

Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends. 

And say — To-morrow is Saint Crispian: 

Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars, 

And say, These wounds I had on Crispin's day. 

Old men forget ; yet all shall be forgot. 

But he'll remember with advantages 

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names. 

Familiar in their mouths as household words, — 

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, 

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloster, — 

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. 

This story shall the good man teach his son ; 

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by. 

From this day to the ending of the world, 

But we in it shall be remembered; 

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers : 



POR TRA YBD B Y MIMSELP. 2^7 

For he, to-day, that sheds his blood with me, 

Shall be my brother : be he ne'er so vile, 

This day shall gentle his condition : 

And gentlemen in England, now abed, 

Shall think themselves accursed, they were not here, 

And hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks, 

That fought with us upon St. Crispin's day. 

I might have presented a dozen other 
points wherein the Prince resembles 
the Poet ; but it is hardly necessary. 
Let me, however, mention two or three 
more. Everybody knows how fond 
Shakespeare is of punning. Great poet 
as he was, he obviously dearly loved 
a pun. There is not one of his plays, I 
think, In which he does not somewhere 
perpetrate ^ pun of some sort. Now, 
notice how fond the Prince is of punning ! 
He Is as good a hand at it as Falstaff 
himself. He twists "nave of a wheel" 
into "knave of a whale"; plays upon 
c holer, collar , and halter ; speaks of 
Poins's ''low countries making a shift to 
eat up his holland ; " and placing a dish 
of apple-johns before Sir John Falstaff, 
he tells him these are " five more Sir 
17 



2^8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Johns," and taking off his hat, says, ** I 
will now take my leave of these six dry, 
round, old, withered knights ! " 

Has the reader ever noticed how 
closely the Prince observes men and 
things ? He penetrates every man at a 
glance. What prince ever before deigned 
to notice the dress of his tavern-host 
as this Prince has? "This leathern- 
jerkin, crystal-button, nott-pated, agate- 
ring, puke - stocking, caddis - garter, 
smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch ! " What 
prince ever before noticed so minutely 
the personal attire and other small mat- 
ters touching his companion as this 
Prince has observed in Poins ? " What a 
disgrace it is to me to remember thy 
name?" etc. What prince ever before 
noticed what the clothes of the new-born 
babies of struggling gentry were made 
of ? " God knows whether those that 
bawl out the ruins of thy linen shall 
inherit His kingdom," etc. 

Here is another point, which some 
might make much of. Every reader 
of the plays knows with what respect 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



259 



Shakespeare treats Catholic clergymen 
and Catholic doctrines. The Church 
suffers no Injury at his hands. One 
of the first among those who wrote 
of him ends his account by saying '' he 
died a Papist," and certainly no one can 
afihrm that his writings controvert the 
assertion. Whether he was a Papist or 
not, I cannot undertake to say ; certain 
It is, he was no contemner of the Church ; 
and here I find the man who most of all 
resembles him represented as 

full of fair regard, 
And a true lover of the holy Church ; 

and so well versed in Catholic doctrine, 
that 

Hear him but reason in divinity, 

And, all-admiring, vi^ith an inward wish 

You would desire the king were made a prelate. 

The reader may take this for what It 
is worth ; but I think It may fairly be 
looked upon as another link in the won- 
derful chain which has unrolled itself In 
my hands. 

We know that Shakespeare was no 



26o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

friend of the Puritans. How could he 
have had any sympathy with a sect that 
condemned all pleasure and play-acting 
as wicked and sinful ? When he ridi- 
cules the Puritans in the character of 
Malvolio, and makes Sir Toby Belch 
exclaim, '* Dost thou think, that because 
thou art virtuous there shall be no more 
cakes and ale ? " he doubtless expressed 
his own sentiments. We must never for- 
get that the Catholic Church, however 
inimical to science, has ever been the 
friend and encourager of art, the patron 
of painting, of poetry, music, and the 
drama, and never the enemy of social 
pleasure ; and it is not improbable that 
the Poet had more sympathy with this 
ancient Church, which favored his art 
and chimed in with his Inclinations, than 
with the new one that frowned on and 
condemned both as sinful. 

These are things that, I Imagine, cannot 
fail to strengthen the conviction that the 
Prince and the Poet are one and the 
same person ; and I may conclude my 
direct comparison, by remarking, that the 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 26 1 

sculptor who fashioned the statue of the 
Poet, now in the New York Central 
Park, formed a likeness as near that of 
the Prince, as the likeness of the Prince 
in the Poet's writings is remarkably like 
that of the Poet.* 



* In view of Prince Henry's kindness toward the tapsters, 
his ready recognition of Falstaff's witty page, his mercy 
toward " the man who railed against our person yesterday," 
his horror of war in all its forms, his anxiety for the safety 
of the Harfleurians, and especially his gentle appreciation 
of every common soldier in his army, I do not see that Mr. 
. Appleton Morgan is justified in his declaration, that Shake- 
speare had not a particle of sympathy with the people, 
and cared only for those of noble blood. He portrayed men 
as he saw them ; often brutal and inhuman as they were ; but 
he himself was never ungentle toward the lowly. 

In the Poet's time, all the world thought more of the "high- 
born " than of the " low-born ; " and it is unreasonable to ex- 
pect a poet of the Sixteenth Century to be imbued with the 
advanced democratic sentiments of the Nineteenth. Pretty 
much the same kind of sentiment reigns at the present day in 
Germany, for even the students there have little respect for 
anybody except those that are students or /mve been students ; 
the rest are cattle. 

There is much that is interesting in Mr. Morgan's recent 
book, "Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism," and his 
edition of Shakespeare's Plays, published by the New York 
Shakespeare Society, of which Mr. Morgan is President, is an 
admirable work ; but I am inclined to think that many of his 
conclusions - are by no means tenable. He leans strongly 
toward the Baconians, and exhibits anything but a reverent 
spirit toward the Poet. - - 



262 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MR. DONNELLY AND HIS CRYPTOGRAM.* 

WHEN somebody asked a Washing- 
ton statistician to collect certain 
statistics for him, the first inquiry he 
made was, " What do you want p7'oved? " 
This is precisely the spirit in which the 
Baconians have gone to work ; they are 
not seeking for truth, or for that which 
facts and figures may show ; but, having 
once conceived what they consider a 
plausible theory, they twist everything 
into facts and figures to suit this theory. 
This, it may be said, is an assertion 
that cuts both ways ; for it applies as 
much to my theory as to theirs. True ; 
but will any one deny that mine is nat- 

* This chapter was in the hands of the printer before I saw 
Mr. Donnelly's book. I do not find, however, anything ma- 
terial to change in it, and I think it worth standing as it is. 
The next chapter will deal directly with ** The Great Crypto- 
gram." 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



263 



ural, probable, and in accordance with 
experience and analogy, while theirs is 
the contrary ? Who has ever heard of 
such a thing as they propound? and 
who has not heard of such a thing as 
I have propounded? Had more been 
known of the every-day life of the Poet, 
his resemblance to the Prince would prob- 
ably have been noticed long ago. In the 
spirit in which the Baconians have gone 
to work, you may prove anything; you 
may just as easily prove that Shakespeare 
wrote Bacon's works as that Bacon wrote 
Shakespeare's ; you may make even fig- 
ures (ciphers) lie like fiends ; and things 
that have no more connection with each 
other than fire and water you may com- 
bine, and use them as wonderful evi- 
dences of the truth of your discovery. 
Like Macbeth's '^juggling fiends," they 

Palter with us in a double sense ; 

They keep the word of promise to our ear, 

And break it to our hope. 

Of all the books which I have read, 
that which contains the most ingenious 



264 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

example of special pleading (let the stu- 
dent mark that word) is ''The Author- 
ship of Shakespeare," by Judge Holmes. 
This judge's performance reminds me 
forcibly of the astute lawyer of the olden 
time who declared : "Give me but three 
lines of any man's handwriting, and I 
shall send him to the gallows ! " Never 
did lawyer, holding a brief, argue more 
ingeniously and skilfully to win his case ; 
yet never did lawyer, holding such a 
brief, fail more completely to convince 
the jury of the truth of his plea. If his 
book live at all, it can live only as a rare 
example of skill in special pleading, or as 
a specimen of what may be done in such 
pleading. 

But this work seems almost unknown 
compared with that of another ad- 
venturer in this quixotic field, whose 
forthcoming work, to achieve a similar 
end, has been more widely heralded and 
more extensively advertised than perhaps 
any other work of this age. Perhaps no 
book of modern times has called forth 
so many leading articles, so many news- 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



26s 



paper comments, as Mr. Donnelly's long- 
promised work on Shakespeare. 

In the New York World of August 
28, 1887, there appeared a thirteen-col- 
umn letter by Professor Thomas David- 
son, describing his visit to Mr. Ignatius 
Donnelly, at his home in Hastings, Min- 
nesota, and giving the most minute ac- 
count of his forthcoming book on Shake- 
speare, entitled, '* The Great Crypto- 
gram : Francis Bacon's Cipher in the so- 
called Shakespeare Plays." 

Curiously enough, most of Mr. Don- 
nelly's strange discoveries seem to have 
been made in these tv/o plays (the First 
and the Second Part of Henry /K), in 
which I have endeavored to show that 
Shakespeare portrayed his own character 
under the guise of that of the Prince ; 
and the interpretations and discoveries 
he finds in these two plays are more 
strange and startling than anything to 
be found in the wildest romance. On 
reading Professor Davidson's long and 
elaborate letter, I felt profoundly and sin- 
cerely convinced of one thing : that, how- 



266 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ever ingenious and skilful the discoverer, 
there is, for any sane man— any man capa- 
ble of sound judgment — no more satisfac- 
tion in these pretended discoveries than 
in the ravings of a maniac. There is not, 
to speak plainly, an iota of truth, or a 
shadow of likelihood, in the whole busi- 
ness. It is one of those remarkable lit- 
erary delusions, which, like the forgeries 
of Ireland, the discoveries of Macpher- 
son, or the ingenious deceptions of Chat- 
terton, are bound to disappear in time, 
and serve at last as a warning example, 

To point a moral or adorn a tale. 

To make this clear to the reader, I 
shall take three or four of Mr. Don- 
nelly's propositions or discoveries, as 
stated by Professor Davidson, and 
show what far-fetched conclusions he 
draws from them ; and by these exam- 
ples the reader may judge of the char- 
acter of the rest, and of the character 
of the mind that advances them as 
proofs. 

Mr. Donnelly contends that because 



Shakespeare described the sea and Scot- 
tish scenery so well, he must have been 
to sea and to Scotland ; and as we have 
no record of his having been at sea or 
in Scotland, and have a record of Lord 
Bacon having been at both, the latter 
must therefore have written the plays 
containing these descriptions ! Because 
St. Albans, Bacon's birthplace, is fre- 
quently mentioned in the plays, and 
Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birth- 
place, not once. Bacon must have been 
the author of the plays ! 

Logic indeed ! This reasoning reminds 
me of Johnson's sarcasm, ''He who 
drives fat oxen must himself be fat ! " 
And because the author of the plays 
knew so much of law, he must have been 
a lawyer ; and what lawyer, Forsooth, but 
Bacon ! Why, according to this reason- 
ing, he must have been a clergyman, a 
physician, a farmer, a soldier, a sailor, a 
statesman,— everything ! for he knew as 
much of theology, medicine, agriculture, 
war, the sea, the state, as most clergy- 
men, physicians, farmers, soldiers, sai- 



268 PPTlL/AM SkAKBSPEARB 

lors, statesmen know each of his particu- 
lar profession or calling. This is what 
makes the Archbishop's description of 
him so marvellously significant and ap- 
plicable : " Hear him but reason in di- 
vinity," etc. He was many men rolled 
into one. 

It is amazinp: what nonsense these Ba- 
conians will write, and what nonsense 
these editors will print. Perhaps it is 
not less amazing to see how many people 
believe in their nonsense. I sometimes 
think, on seeing how many clever men 
accept this theory, that when a man be- 
comes over-clever, he comes very near 
being a fool. 

*' Great genius is to madness near allied.^' 

To procure such stuff as this, the New 
York Woidd sends to Minnesota a 
special correspondent, who talks with 
Mr. Donnelly, examines his work, and 
fills two entire pages of the paper with 
his discoveries, which are endorsed and 
believed in by Benjamin Butler and 
other equally able men. 



• 



POktkA YEb BY mMSELP. 269 

As to Shakespeare's descriptions of 
Scottish scenery and the sea, Mr. Don- 
nelly's assumption is not only absurd 
in itself, but it is absurd from the fact 
that there is good ground for suppos- 
ing that the Poet did see Scotland and 
the sea. We find, for instance, that a 
company of English players were in 
Aberdeen in 1601 ; that they were well 
received and well paid ; and that thirty- 
two marks and the freedom of the city 
were conferred on '' Laurence Fletcher, 
comedian to his majesty," who seems to 
have been the leader of the company. 
Now in May, 1603, a patent was made 
out, by the king's order, authorizing 
'•' Laurence Fletcher, William Shake- 
speare, Richard Burbage," and others, 
to perform plays in any part of the king- 
dom. What is more probable than that 
Shakespeare was with this same Fletch- 
er company in Scotland? — As to the 
Fea, we know that he did travel around 
with a ccmpany of players ; and to infer 
tliat because there is no direct mention 
of his having seen the sea, he never did 



^;o 



milTAM S^AlCESP£AkE 



see it, — that an actor accustomed to 
travel in an island "set in the silver sea," 
and yet never saw the sea, — is an argu- 
ment worthy indeed of a Baconian mind. 
In the list of the moneys received in 
1592 by the Chamberlain of Stratford, 
the following item occurs: "Of John 
Shackesper for Richard Fletcher, xxs." 
Here is the father of Shakespeare pay- 
ing to the Chamberlain of Stratford 
twenty shillings for a Richard Fletcher 
of the same town. Mio^ht not this Rich- 
ard Fletcher be the father of Laurence, 
with whom Shakespeare was now associ- 
ated as an actor and dramatist ? Might 
not Shakespeare, while transmitting 
money to his father (which we know he 
did), be thus made the agent for a simi- 
lar service to the father or kinsman of 
his friend and colleague ? We have 
seen that several of Shakespeare's fellow- 
actors were Warwickshire men, and pro- 
bably the personal friends of his father ; 
and why may not this Laurence Fletcher 
be one of them ? These things are, it is 
true, mere speculation ; but they are 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



271 



within the range of probability, which is 
more than can be said of Mr. Donnelly's 
"proofs." 

We may safely conclude, from Mr. 
Donnelly's absurdly unreasonable and 
utterly baseless literary deductions, that 
his cipher deductions are no better ; that 
the stories he manufactures from the 
numbers of the pages, the brackets, the 
commas, the italics, the blunders in the 
folio of 1623, are as fanciful and untrust- 
worthy as his reasonings. Professor 
Davidson confesses he can make noth- 
ing of the cipher : he tells us only 
what marvellous stories Mr. Donnelly 
makes out of it. 

I once heard of a learned German 
professor into whose hands was placed 
a thick manuscript volume, said to have 
been discovered amonof the North 
American Indians by the early explorers; 
and from the hieroglyphic pot-hooks, 
scrawlincrs, and scribblincjs which it 
contained, the professor deciphered a 
whole aboriginal history of wonderful 
interest; — when, lo I it was proved, 



272 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

beyond a shadow of doubt, that the 
book contained nothing but the scrib- 
bhngs and scrawlings of a child, the 
son of a sea-captain, who, unable to 
write, amused himself during his father's 
long voyages by scrawling, scribbling 
and ciphering in this book ! Mr. Don- 
nelly's interpretations of the blunders in 
the folio of 1623 must have been sug- 
gested by the exploit of the German pro- 
fessor, for it is precisely of a piece with 
it. Out of the mistakes of the poor, un- 
skilful printers of the Elizabethan era, he 
manufactures a marvellous story of kings, 
queens, princes and poets, such as none 
but a man of the most fertile imagina- 
tion could conceive. 

'' The work," says Mr. Donnelly, '* is 
vaster than I imagined. I started with 
an expectation of finding one or two 
cipher-words on each page ; then I ad- 
vanced to a dozen or two ; then to a 
score or two ; then I thought the cipher- 
words were one-fifth of the text 

Now I find that more than half the 
words are cipher-words, and that many 



TOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 273 

words are made to do double and treble 
duty." Is not this the very madness of 
midsummer? I have no doubt that he 
will finally end in making the whole thing, 
every word, a cipher, and go on finding 
meanings within meanings, 

"in endless mazes lost," 

until he too, like Miss Delia Bacon and 
Mrs. Ashmead Windel, loses his wits in 
the mad pursuit. May not a new religion, 
a new bible, and a new sect, called the 
Cipheronians, come out of this business? 
What a singular fate has been that of 
Shakespeare, — to have first a number of 
spurious plays foisted on him, and then 
to be denied the credit of those he 
actually wrote ! Why may not Lord Ba- 
con, who '* took all knowledge for his pro- 
vince," have written the plays of the other 
dramatists of that age, as well as those of 
Shakespeare? Is there no cipher in the 
works of Jonson, Marlowe, Greene, 
Lodge, and the rest? The Baconians 
seom to think him capable of everything, 
a perfectly omnipotent genius, who wrote 
j3 



274 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



plays before breakfast, merely as a bit of 
recreation, before going to the serious 
business of the day !* 

Mr. Donnelly speaks of the unaccount- 
able loss of Shakespeare's library, manu- 
scripts, etc.; and concludes, that because 
they cannot be found, he never had a 
library. Did not his body lie one hun- 
dred years in the grave before any notice 
was taken of him or his works ? Was it 
not the Germans, not his own country- 
men, who first unearthed him ? One 
hundred years unnoticed ! Mr. Buckle 
shows that Charles III. changed the face 
of Spain during his reign, — built new 
roads, bridges, canals, schools ; remod- 
elled the universities, encouraged litera- 
ture and science, made everything new, 
— and yet, within less than five yearns 
after his death, five short years, every- 
thing was changed, all had vanished, and 

* Now that the " Great Cryptogram " has appeared, I am 
not a little gratified to find that my own wonderful foresight 
is verified by the discoveries of Mr. Donnelly ; for that gen- 
tleman actually declares that Lord Bacon wrote, not only the 
plays of Shakespeare, but the dramas of Marlowe, the Essays 
of Montaigne, and the " Anatomy of Melancholy " of Burton I 



PORTRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



275 



every trace of his improvements was lost 
forever ! If five years can effect such a 
sweeping change in the records of a na- 
tion, what may not one hundred years 
effect in those of an individual ! Al- 
though Charles had made greater changes 
in Spain than had been made during the 
preceding century and a half, they were 
all lost, in so brief a period, because 
the Spanish people took no interest in 
them, did not care for them. So it was 
with Shakespeare and his writings. The 
people of England, after his death, lost 
all interest in the drama ; they went wild 
on religious and political questions, and 
Shakespeare and the drama were utterly 
neglected ; nay, suppressed ; for the 
Commonwealth well-nigh annihilated the 
drama. It is simply by a miracle of 
good luck, or rather of Providential care, 
that we have even his plays, let alone his 
books and manuscripts. Had his survi- 
ving friends and fellow-actors, Heming 
and Condell, not given us the folio edi- 
tion of 1623, we should have lost most 
of his plays as well as his books. 



2;6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

This Is history ; this is the language of 
soberness and truth ; not the fanciful 
imaginings of a cipher-genius. '' It must 
be borne in mind," says Mr. Halliwell- 
Phillipps, *' that actors then occupied an 
inferior position in society, and that even 
the vocation of a dramatic writer was 
considered scarcely respectable. The In- 
telligent appreciation of genius by Indi- 
viduals was not considered sufficient to 
neutralize in these matters the effect of 
public opinion and the animosity of the 
religious world; all circumstances thus 
uniting to banish general interest in the 
history of persons connected in any way 
with the stage. This biographical indif- 
ference continued for many years ; and 
long before the season arrived for a real 
curiosity to be taken in the subject, the 
records from which alone a satisfactory 
memoir could have been constructed had 
disappeared. At the time of Shake- 
speare's decease, non-political correspond- 
ence was rarely preserved, elaborate dia- 
ries were not the fashion, and no one, 
except In semi-apocryphal collections of 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



277 



jests, thought It worth while to record 
many of the sayings and doings, or to 
delineate at any length the characters, of 
actors and dramatists ; so that it is gen- 
erally by the merest accident that partic- 
ulars of interest respecting them have 
been discovered." 

To show how time sweeps away ordi- 
nary records, it is only necessary to no- 
tice the remarkable fact, that few men 
can tell anything of their ancestors far- 
ther back than their grandfathers. Stop 
one hundred men on Broadway, and ask 
each one who was his great-grandfather : 
and I will guarantee that ninety of them 
will be unable to answer. Look into the 
lives of great men, and you will find that 
few of them can go farther back than 
their grandfathers. Time is almost as 
swift and sure in destroying private 
records as a prairie-fire in destroying the 
crops of the farmer. 



^7-8 



WlLUAM SHAiClElSPkARM. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE CIPHER ITS FALLACY PLAINLY 

SHOWN. 

ON looking at this stupendous monu- 
ment of labor, of ingenious and skil- 
ful labor, '' The Great Cryptogram " by 
Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, my first feeling 
is one of profound regret, that so able 
and well-informed a man should have 
wasted his great powers and spent such an 
herculean amount of energy on so fruit- 
less a task. Mr. Donnelly is an extraordi- 
nary man ; a man of uncommon resources 
of mind and tremendous energy of char- 
acter. A slight acquaintance with his 
work will show the reader that, combined 
with immense knowledge, he has large 
imagination, great discrimination, fine 
powers of expression, indefatigable indus- 
try, inexhaustible faith and zeal, and 
boundless enthusiasm. A man of such a 
character may easily make something out 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



m 



of nothing. No task is too great for 
him ; nothing is impossible for him ; and 
the task he has undertaken, though ac- 
companied by insurmountable difficulties, 
seems in no wise to have daunted him. 

Unhappily, his zeal and enthusiasm 
have overbalanced and clouded his other 
powers : a sound judgmient has been per- 
verted by a vivid imagination, and a 
strong understanding has given way to a 
determination to succeed in a fond and 
foolish pursuit. He has searched so per- 
sistently, so intently, and so unrelentingly 
for an imaginary treasure, that he has 
at last forced himself into the belief that 
he has found it ; and what he has found, 
though it may satisfy himself, cannot pos- 
sibly satisfy any human being still possess- 
ed with the ordinary share of common 
sense. In short, his zeal and enthusiasm 
have carried him away and made him the 
victim of a miserable delusion. 

Mr. Donnelly has discovered (we will 
do him the credit of thinking that he 
believes it himself) not only one cipher, 
but several, in Shakespeare's Plays. He 



28o WiLLiAM SHAKRSPEAkE. 

says himself, *' There are many ciphers 
in the plays ; " and he may yet publish 
several books, showing a dozen or more 
ciphers in Shakespeare's plays. To look 
at his markings, notes, figures, signs, 
crosses, fractions, words, in different-col- 
ored inks and different-sized characters, 
in the folio of 1623, is enough to make 
one's brain reel. His work is a pyramid 
of industry and perseverance ; none but 
an enthusiast, none but a man of extra- 
ordinary energy and endurance could 
produce such an unparalleled piece of 
work. In actual bulk and quantity of 
matter, his book would make at least a 
score of volumes like this. I have not a 
shadow of doubt — in fact the reader will 
soon be convinced of it himself — that 
the same industry, ingenuity, and perse- 
verance, applied to the writings of any 
poet, w^ould be equally productive of 
ciphers : Mr. Donnelly could make a 
cipher out of any book. I wonder that 
he has not tried his hand on Homer in 
the same way. What a field he would 
have for the exercise of his fertile Imag- 



PORTKA VMD B V HIMSELF. 28 1 

inatlon in the pages of the much-criticised 
Iliad ! If he could get hold of -an origi- 
nal parchment copy of that poem, he 
would certainly make it out as the work 
of Noah or of Jupiter himself ! 

In order that the reader may see for 
himself how Mr. Donnelly has gone 
to work, in searching for a cipher by 
Lord Bacon in Shakespeare's plays, I 
shall give him a fair sample of his book, 
a sample which will show not only his 
methods, but the spirit in which he has 
worked. I quote the following from 
"The Great Cryptogram," Book II., p. 
18, omitting nothing but his foot-notes 
referring to the names, acts, and scenes 
of the plays quoted : 

But it was in the first part of King Henry IV. 
that I found the most startling proofs of the exist- 
ence of a cipher. 

In act ii, scene i, we have a stable scene, with 
the two ■" carriers " and an hostler ; it is night, or 
rather early morning — two o'clock — it is the morning 
of the Gadshill robbery ; the carriers are feeding 
their horses and getting ready for the day's journey ; 
and in the dialogue they speak as follows : 



282 tVilllAM SHAKESPEAkE 

1 Car. What, Ostler, come away and be hanged ; come 
away. 

2 Ca7-. I have a gammon of Bacon, and two razes of Gin- 
ger, to be delivered as far as Charing-crosse. 

This occurs on page 53 of the Histories ; we have 
seen that the other word Bacoii occurs on page 53 
of the Comedies. As these are the only instances 
in which the word Bacon occurs alone and not 
hyphenated with any other word, in all these volu- 
minous plays, occupying nearly a thousand pages, 
is it not remarkable that both should be found 
on the same numbered page } 

We have the original of this robbery scene in 
another old play, entitled The Famous Victories of 
Henry the Fifth. In each case the men robbed were 
bearing money to the King's treasury ; and in each 
case they called upon the Prince after the robbery 
for restitution. In the old play, Dericke, the car- 
rier, who is robbed by the Prince's man, says: 

Oh, maisters, stay there ; nay, let's never belie the man ; 
for he hath not beaten and wounded me also, but he hath 
beaten and wounded my packe, and hath taken the gj'eat rase 
of Ginger that bouncing Bess . . . should have had. 

But there is no bacon in his pack. That was 
added, as in the other instances, when the play was 
re-written, doubled in size, and the cipher inserted. 

I said that Bacon, in making any claim to the 
authorship of the plays, would probably seek to 
identify himself (as centuries might elapse before 
the discovery of the cipher) by giving the name of 
his father, the celebrated Sir Nicholas, Queen 



POIi TRA YED BY HIMSELF. 283 

Elizabeth's Lord Keeper ; and here, in the same 
scene, on page 53, appears his father's name. 

The chamberlain enters the stable ; also Gadshill, 
"the setter" of the thieves, as Poins calls him: 
that is, the one who points the game for them. 
The chamberlain says : 

Cham. Good-morning Master Gads-Hill ; it holds current 
that I told you yesternight. There's Franklin in the wilde of 
Kent hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold. 1 
heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper; 
a kinde of auditor, one that hath abundance of charge, too 
(God knows what) ; they are up already and call for egges 
and butter. They will away presently. 

Gad. Sirra, if they meete not with S. Nicholas Clarks, He 
give thee this ijccke. 

Cham. No ; lie none of it. I prithee, keep that for the 
hangman, for I know thou worship' st S. Nicholas as truly as a 
man of falsehood may. 

First I wculd observe the unnecessary presence 
of the word Kejit. Why was the county from which 
the man came mentioned? Because Kent wms the 
birthplace of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and in any cipher 
narrative it was very natural to speak of Sir Nicho- 
las Bacon born in Kent. 

But obseive how Saint Nicholas is dragged in. 
He is represented as the patron saint of thieves, 
when in fact he was nothing of the kind. Saint 
Anthony, I believe, is entitled to that honor. But, 
ingenious as Bacon was, he could see no other way 
to get Nicholas into that stable scene, and into the 
talk of thieves and carriers, except by such an allu- 
sion as the foregoing; and he made it even at th§ 



284 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

violation of the saintly attributes. Saint Nicholas, 

Bishop of Myra, was born in Patara, Lycia, and 

died about 340. " He is invoked as the patron of 

sailors, merchants, travellers and captives, and the 

guardian of school-boys, girls and children." He is 

the original of the Santa- Klaus of the nursery. 

And in the same scene on the same column we 

have : 

If I hang, old Sir John hangs with mee. 

This gives us the knightly prefix to Nicholas 
Bacon's name. And it appeared to me there was 
something here about the Exchequer of the Com- 
monwealth of England ; for all these words drop 
out in the same connection. Only a few lines 
below the word Nicholas, the word Commo7iwealth is 
twice dragged in, in most absurd fashion. 

Describing the thieves, Gadshill says : 

And drink sooner than pray ; and yet T He, for they pray 
continually to their saint the Commonwealth ; or rather not 
pray to her but prey on her, for they ride up and down on her, 
and make her their Bootes. 

Cham. What, the Commonwealth their Bootes ? Will she 
hold out water in — a foul way ? 

The complicated exigencies of the cipher com- 
pelled Bacon to talk nonsense. Who ever heard of 
a Saint Commonwealth ? And who ever heard of 
converting a saint into boots to keep out water.'* 

And on the next page we have the word exchequer 
twice repeated : 

Fal. I will not bear my own flesh so far a^oot again for all 
the coin in thy father's exchequer. 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 285 

Again : 

Bardolph. Case ye, case ye; on with your vizards, there's 
money of the King coming down the hill, 'tis going to the 
King's exchequer. 

Fill. You lie, you rogue, 'tis going to the King's tavern. 

And a little further on we have : 

When I am King of England. 

And as the Court of Exchequer was formerly a court 
of equity, in the same scene we find that word : 

FaL If the Prince and Poynes be not two arrant cowards 
there's no eqiiity stirring. 

Here again the language is forced ; this is not a 
natural expression. 

All this is in the second act of the play, and in 
the first act we have : 

As well as waiting in the cotirt. 
O, rare I'll be a \iX2iV& judge. 
For obtaining of suits. 

And then we have master of the great seal. 

Good-morrow, Master Gads-hill. 

We'll but seal, and then to horse 

For they have great charge. 

All this is singular : Sir— Nicholas— Bacon— of 
Kent— Master of \\\^—great^seal of the Conmion- 
wealth of England. 

And again : Judge of the court of the exchequer- 
equity. 



286 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

It is true that this might all be the result of acci- 
dent. But I go a step further. 

On the fiext page 54, and in the next scene, 1 
found the following extraordinary sentences : 

Enter Travellers. 

Trav. Come Neighbor ; the boy shall leade our Horses 
downe the hill : We'll walk a-foot awhile, and ease our 
legges. 

Thieves. Stay. 

Trav. Jesu bless us. 

Falstaff. Strike : down with them, cut the villains throats; 
a whorson Caterpillars : Baco7t-iQd knaves, they hate us 
youth ; downe with ihem, fleece them. 

Trav. O, we are undone, both we and ours forever. 

Falstaff. Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are you undone ? No 
ye fat Chuffes, I would your store were here. On Bacons, on, 
What, ye knaves? Young men must live, you are Grand 
Jurers, are ye ? Wee'll jure ye i'faith 

Heere they rob them and binde them. 

Let us examine this. 

The word Bacon is an unusual word in literary 
work. It describes, in its commonly accepted 
sense, an humble article of food. It occurs but 
four times in all these plays of Shakespeare, viz.: 

1. In The Ale? ry Wives of Windsor., in the instance 
I have given, page 53 of the Comedies, " Hang-hog 
is the Latin for Bacon.''^ 

2. In the \st Henry /K, act ii, scene i, "a gam- 
mon of Bacon,'' page 53 of the Histories. 

3. In these two instances last above given, on 
page 54 of the Histories. 

So that, out of four instances in the plays in which 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 287 

it is used, this significant word is employed three 
times on two successive pages of the same play in 
the same act! 

I undertake to say that the reader cannot find in 
any work of prose or poetry, not a biography of 
Bacon, in that age, or any subsequent age, where no 
reference was intended to be made to the man 
Bacon, another such collocation of Nicholas — Bacon 
— Bacofi-fed — Bacons. I challenge the sceptical to 
undertake the task. 

And why does Falstaff stop in the full tide of rob- 
bery to panicularize the kind of food on which his 
victims feed ? Who ever heard, in all the annals of 
Newgate, of such superfluous and absurd abuse ? 
Robbery is a work for hands, not tongues. And it 
is out of all nature that Falstaff, committing a crime 
the penalty of which was death, should stop to think 
of bacon, or greens, or beefsteak, or anything else 
of the kind. 

Is it intended as a term of reproach 1 No ; the 
bacon-fed man in that day was the well-fed man. I 
quote again from the famous Victories of Henry V. 

John, the cobbler, and Dericke, the carrier, con- 
verse ; Dericke proposes to go and live with the 
cobbler. He says : 

I am none of these great slouching fellows that devoure 
these great pieces of beefe andbrewes ; alas, a trifle serves me, 
a woodcocke, a chicken, or a capons legge, or any such little 
thing serves me. 

John. A capon I Why, man, T cannot get a capon once a 
yeare, except it be at Christmas, at some other man's hous", 
for we cobblers be glad of a dish of rootes. 



288 WILLIAM SHAKESI'EARE 

Falstaff might fling a term of reproach at his vic- 
tims, but scarcely a term of compliment. 

But Falstaff calls the travellers Bacons! Think 
of it. If he had called them hogs, I could under- 
stand it, but to call them by the name of a piece of 
smoked meat ! I can imagine a man calling 
another a bull, an ox, a beef ; but never a tender- 
loin. Moreover, why should Falstaff say, " On, 
Bacons, on ! " unless he was chasing the travellers 
away ? But he was trying to detain them, to hold 
on to them, for the stage direction says : " Here 
they rob them and Mnde them.^'' 

When I read that phrase, " On, Bacons, on ! " I 
said to myself : Beyond question there is a cipher 
in this play. 

Then Mr. Donnelly goes on to show 
that because the tapster's name, Francis, 
occurs twenty times, Saiitt Albans, 
Bacon's birthplace, several times, Gray's 
Inn, where Bacon studied, once or twice, 
air these are sure indications that Bacon 
put them there as a cipher to show ''the 
next ages " that he wrote the plays ! The 
repeating of the name Francis so often 
was done expressly ''to draw the atten- 
tion of the sleepy-eyed world to the fact 
that there is something more here than 
appears on the surface !" Mr. Donnelly 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF, 



289 



takes the word white and the word horse, 
which are five pages apart, and because 
each is the sixty-ninth word in the page, 
and the mystical number sixty-nine is 
the same upside down, he makes wonders 
out of it ! One would think he had been 
consulting the numbers of the lottery- 
players, or the cabalistic terms of the 
spiritualist oracles, to have his head filled 
with such tomfoolery as this. 

Wherever the word shake or spear oc- 
curs, in any of the plays, no matter in 
what connection, he draws marvellous 
conclusions from it. He quotes these 
lines, for instance, from Henry VI : 

Who loves the king, and will embrace his pardon, 
Fling up his cap, and say — God bless his majesty ! 
Who hateth him, and honors not his father 
Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake, 
Shake he his weapon at us, and pass by : 

Then jumps to Othello, in which lago says: 

I fear the trust Othello puts in him, 
At some odd time of his infirmity. 
Will shake this island. 

Then he passes to Henry IV., where 
Warwick says : 



2Q0 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: ' 

Peace, cousin, say no more. 
And now I will unclasp a secret book, 
And to your quick-conceiving discontents 
I'll read you matter deep and dangerous, 
As full of peril and adventurous spirit 
As to o'erwalk a current, roaring loud. 
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear. 

Of these lines Mr. Donnelly makes much. 
''As a spear," says he, "did not usually 
exceed ten feet in length, we are forced 
to ask ourselves, what kind of a stream 
could that have been which it was used 
to bridge ? One could more easily leap 
it by the aid of the spear than cross on 
such a frail and bending structure." 
When one is determined to find a cipher, 
how blind he becomes to poetic beauties ! 
Then he quotes Bardolph's account of 
the way in which Falstaff made his com- 
panions " tickle their noses with spear- 
grass, to make them bleed ; " and asks 
triumphantly, '' Would not blades of grass 
have done as well, without particularizing 
the species ? " No, blades of grass would 
not have done as well ; for this is one of 
the peculiarities of a work of genius, that 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



291 



the author makes his work more real by 
particularizing. 

Then he turns again to Henry VI., 
where the Duke of York says : 

That gold must round engirt these brows of mine ; 
Whose smile and power, like to Achilles' spear, 
Is able with the change to kill and cure : 

and then remarks : ''This comparison of 
a man to a spear, and a medicinal spear 
at that, is not natural." If anything is 
not natural, it is surely Mr. Donnelly's 
interpretations. He might as well quote 
the following from Ecclesiasticus to 
prove that Shakespeare or Bacon wrote 
the Bible : 

"Thy alms shall fight for thee against thine 
enemies better than a mighty shield and strong 
spear." Ch. xxix., v. 13. 

Does the reader want any more of this 
stuff? Is there, in literature, anything so 
absurd as work of this kind ? But this is 
not all. I mtcst quote a little more, to 
show the extraordinary lengths to which 
he can go : 

In a great many instances the word Bacon seems 



2Q2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to have been made by combining bay with con^ or 
can^ which in that day was pronounced with the 
broad accent like con^ as it is even yet in England 
and in parts of America. 

In such a desperate bay of death. — Richard III, 
The other day a bay courser. — Timon of Athens. 
To ride on a bay trotting horse.— A'/«^ Lear. 
I'd give bay curtail.— ^//'j Well That End's Well. 

He seems to have been fond of the bay color in a 
horse. 

Why, it hath bay windows. — Twelfth Night. 
The bay trees are all withered. — Richard II, 
Brutus, bay not me,.—fulius Casar. 

And then we have : 

Ba, pueritia, with horn added. Ba. — Lovers Labor'' s Lost. 
Proof will make me cry ba. — Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

And when we come to the con^ it is still more forced ; 

Thy horse will sooner con an oration. — Troilus and Cressidcu 

The cipher pressed him hard when he wrote such 
a sentence as this. It is not the horse will deliver an 
oration, or the horse will study an oration ; but the 
horse will con it. 

And again : 

But I con him no thanks for it. — AlVs Well That Ends Well. 
Yes, thanks, I must you con. — Timon of Athens. 

I should say the cipher did ''press him 
hard " to induce him to write such non- 
sense. Could anything under heaven 
be more far-fetched ? 



PQRTRA YED BY HIMSELF, 



293 



But In order to expose the fallacy of 
his arithmetical cipher, I shall make one 
more quotation from his book, and then 
I am done with him forever : 

Being satisfied that there was a cipher in the 
Pla3's, and that it probably had some connection 
with the paging of the FoHo, I turned to page 53 of 
the Histoiries, where theiine occurs : 

I have a gammon of Bacon and two razes of ginger. 

I commenced and counted from the top. of the 
column downward, word by word, counting only, the 
spoken words, until I reached the word Bacon, and 
I found it was the 371st word. 

I then divided that number, 371, by fifty-three, 
the number of the page, and the quotient was seven ! 
That is, the number of the page multiplied by seven 
-produces. the number of the word Bacon. Thus: 

53x7=371 

This I regarded as extraordinary. There are 
938 words on the page, and there was, therefore, 
only one chance out of 938 that any particular word 
on the page would match the number of the page. 

But where did that se^ien come from which, multiply- 
ing 53, produced -T^^Y^^Bacon ? I found there were 
seven italic words on the first column of page 53, to- 
wit : ' (i). Mortimer (2), Glendoiver (3), Mortimer (4), 
Douglas (5), Charles (6), Waifie (7), Robin, 



294 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



There are 459 words on this column, and there 
was, therefore, only one chance out of 459 that the 
number of italic words would agree with the quo- 
tient obtained by dividing 371 by 53. For it will be 
seen that if Charles Waine had been united by a 
hyphen, or if waine, being the name of a thing, a 
wagon, had been printed in Roman letters, the count 
would not have agreed. Again, if the word Heigh-ho 
(the 190th word) had not been hyphenated, or if 
Chamber-lye had been printed as two words, the 
word Bacon would not have been the 371st word. 
Or if the nineteenth word, infaifh, had been printed 
as two words, the count would have been thrown 
out. If our selves (the sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth 
words) had been run together as one word, as they 
often are, the word Bacon would have been the 370th 
word, and would not have matched with the page. 
Where so many minute points had to be considered, 
a change of any one of which would have thrown the 
count out, I regarded it as very remarkable that the 
significant word Baco7i should be precisely seven 
times the number of the page. 

Still, standing alone, this might have happened 
accidentally. 

I remembered, then, that other significant word, 
Saint. Albans, in act iv, scene 2, page 67, column i. 

And the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of 
S. Albones. 

I counted the words on that column, and the 
word S. Albones was the 402 d word. I again divided 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 29 5 

this total by the number of the page, 67, and the 
quotient was precisely 6. 

67 
6 

402=" S. Albones." 

I counted up the italic words on this column, and 
I found there were just six, to wit : (i) Bardolph 
(2), Feto (3), Lazarus {^), Jack (5), Hal{6),John, 

This was certainly extraordinary. 

There were on that page 890 words. There was, 
therefore, but one chance out of 890 that the signifi- 
cant word S. Albones would precisely match the 
page. But there was only one chance in many 
thousands that the two significant words Bacon and 
S. Albofies would both agree precisely with the pages 
they were on ; and not one chance in a hundred 
thousand that, in each case, the number of italics 
on the first column of the page would, when multi- 
plied by the page,. produce in each case numbers 
equivalent to the rare and significant words Bacon 
and S. Albones. 

Now, all this looks plausible ; at least 
some may think it looks plausible ; but a 
little examination will show that there 
is a fatal falsity in the whole proceed- 
ing which at once destroys his con- 
clusions. When he does not succeed by 
dividino; the number of words by the 



296 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



number of the page, he divides by - the 
number of italic words ; when this does 
not succeed, he divides by the number of 
hyphens ; when this does not succeed, he 
divides by the number of parentheses; 
when this does not succeed, he divides 
by the number of brackets; when this 
again does not succeed, he divides by a 
certOuin number of lines ; when this does 
not succeed, he divides hy something else ; 
and when this fails him, he multiplies, or 
adds, or subtracts anything he fancies. 
If, in counting the words one way, he 
does not succeed, he counts them in an- 
other ; if beginning at the top of a col- 
umn will not do, he begins at the bot- 
tom ; if this will not do, he begins at the 
middle ; if this again will not do, he be- 
gins at the end or at the beginning of a 
scene, or anywhere he chooses ! He 
says himself (and the wonder is, that he 
should confess such a thing, and expect 
people to believe in his cipher) : '* After 
a long time, by a great deal of experi- 
mentation, I discovered [discovered is 
good !] that the count runs not only 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 297 

from the beginnings and ends of acts, 
scenes, and columns, but also from the 
beginnings and ends of such sub-divis- 
ions of scenes as are caused by the stage 
directions, such as * Enter Morton,' 'En- 
ter Falstaff,' ' A retreat is sounded,* 
' Exit Worcester and Vernon/ * Falstaff 
riseth up,' etc." 

Does not this beat anything ever con- 
ceived ? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it 
philosophic ? Can the man believe in it 
himself ? One would think that, either 
he had lost his wits, or he must think that 
other people have lost theirs. Surely 
there is a screw loose in some part of his 
capacious brain, or an obliquity cast in 
his mental vision, which prevents him 
from thinking logically, or seeing straight 
and clear, as other people think and see. 
I fail to see an iota of reason, of com- 
mon-sense, of probability, in the whole 
business ; and to me, not the least won- 
derful part of it is the circumstance, 
that so shrewd and capable a man as 
Mr. Donnelly should have worked him- 
self into a belief in it. 



298 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



I now see (May, 1888) that the critics 
are nearly unanimous in condemning Mr. 
Donnelly's cipher. Even Professor Da- 
vidson says :^ '' I am now convinced (and 
I say this with the utmost regret, for Mr. 
Donnelly's sake) that he is entirely mis- 
taken in thinking that he has discovered 
a cipher in the plays. The cipher breaks 
down," he continues, ''just where I sus- 
pected it v\^ould. It follows no single 
definite principle ; it is capricioits. Its 
author sets out, in every case, by deter- 
mining what he wishes tojind, and then 
exercising his ingenuity in reaching it by 
a calculation always containing an ele- 
ment of caprice All the coher- 
ency in Mr. Donnelly's curious results is 
due to arbitrary cozmting.'' 

The long-dreaded ''cipher discovery" 
is now, therefore, completely exploded, 
and "The Great Cryptogram" will be 
relegated to the huge collection of fail- 
ures, hoaxes, and delusions of the past. 

The following paragraph from the pen 
of the able London correspondent and 
literary critic of the New York Tribune^ 



POP! TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 



^99 



Mr. George W. Smalley, may suitably 
close the whole cipher controversy : 

" Mr. Donnelly's ' Great Cryptogram ' published 
in London to-day (May 2, 1888) receives the honor 
of a long obituary notice in The Standard. Mr. 
Donnelly had indeed prepared for his own funeral 
by once more -refusing to disclose the key of the 
' Cryptogram.' He had previously delayed on the 
plea that he should lose his copyright, and now 
again postpones it on the pretext that he wishes to 
work it out in more plays. But it does not matter. 
His present reviewer, who writes with signal fair- 
ness, admits that Mr. Donnelly's literary argument, 
though not original, is a solid and conscientious 
piece of literary criticism. But to the ' Cryptogram ' 
he is merciless. One of Mr. Donnelly's most im- 
portant root numbers, 523, which he professes to 
nave obtained by multiplying certain unnamed num- 
bers, cannot have been obtained by multiplying any 
numbers whatever. The cipher, on examination, 
proves to be nothing more than a system so flexible 
and so arbitrarily used that anybody can make any 
story with it that the words in Shakespeare supply. 
There is just show enough of method to deceive 
those who do not examine details. But Mr. Don- 
nelly is the author of his own story, selecting his 
words in the first instance and framing a sort of 
arithmetical justification for them afterward. The 
story itself is but a tissue of trivialities. Such is 
this reviewer's sentence. 



300 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



" Finally Mr. Charles Athill Bluemantle, Pur- 
suivant-of-Arms in the Heralds' College, publishes 
a statement that he has examined the original papers 
relating to the Shakespeare grant of arms. There 
can, he affirms, be no doubt that a patent was as- 
signed to Johan Shakespeare, father of the poet, in 
1596, which was ratified in a subsequent assign- 
ment for Arden. There is ample proof that the 
grantee established the fact that he was of sufficient 
social position to warrant the issue of the patent. 
This letter, as the reviewer well says, is a crushing 
blow to much of the matter of the cipher, and to all 
the theory of JMr. Donnelly's book." 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



301 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SOME IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS TOUCH- 
ING THE BACONIAN THEORY. 

'"T^ HE Baconians cannot get over 
±_ the circumstance that Shakespeare 
should have thought so much of money- 
getting, of real estate speculations, of his 
rank as a gentleman, and so little of his 
writings. How little these critics seem 
to know of the history of men of letters ! 
There is nothing more common than 
this among men of this class. Did not 
Walter Scott think much more of his 
rank as a Scottish nobleman, of his 
position as a gentleman of landed es- 
tate, the head and founder of a family, 
than of all his fame and influence as an 
author? Did not Congreve think much 
more of his rank as an English gentle- 
man than of his wide reputation as a wit 
and dramatist ? and did not Voltaire tell 



302 WILLIAM SHAl^ESPEARE 

him he would not have thought it worth 
while visiting him if he were merely a 
gentleman ? Did not Swift confess that 
his highest ambition was to ride in a 
coach and four, and be able to say '' Damn 
you " to any man living ? Shakespeare 
saw, as Swift did, the immense respect, 
the solid comfort and independence, 
which rank and wealth enjoyed in Eng- 
land ; and it is natural that he should 
have looked upon the attainment of 
these as the ne phts ultra of worldly am- 
bition. He had indeed been painting 
and praising men of noble blood all his 
life, and it was natural that he should 
now aspire to be one of them himiself. 
It is a remarkable fact, one which- 
Shakespeare has no doubt somewhere 
noted himself (for everything may be 
found in his writings), that men of 
genius generally think more of some in- 
ferior quality which they possess, or at 
which they are aiming, than of that by 
which they are distinguished. This is 
one of their weaknesses ; and it is 
plain, from what we know of the pains 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



303 



taken by Shakespeare to ''gentle his 
condition," that he thought much more 
of the rank he held as a citizen of Strat- 
ford than of that which he held in the 
eyes of the world as an author and actor. 
Mr. Halliwell Phillipps rightly thinks, 
that Shakespeare's '' continued increase 
of property in the neighborhood of his 
early home had constant reference to the 
establishment of a family, which should 
for ages inherit the fruits of his exer- 
tions." Did not Scott's efforts have the 
same object? and was not Scott, of all 
men, the one man who, in genius, char- 
acter, and productions, came nearest to 
Shakespeare ? 

It has been asked, How should Shake- 
speare, with his plebeian training and 
associations, have acquired such knowl- 
edge of the language, manners, and con- 
duct of the nobility, as he displays in the 
historical plays ? I might ask in reply, 
How should Bacon, with his patrician 
training and associations, nave acquired 
such knowledge of the language, man- 
ners, and conduct of the commonalty, as 



304 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



is displayed in these same plays? The 
poet, the man of imaginative power, is 
much more likely to form correct notions 

. of unknown territory, than the philoso- 
pher, the man of facts, figures, and logi- 
cal conclusions. I have heard that Du- 
mas, before he ever saw Italy, described 
that country much more correctly and 
graphically than any traveller that had 
seen it. This is the power of genius ; 
this is that magical power which we call 
im.agination, and which plodders cannot 
comprehend. 

But Lord Bacon was also a man of 
genius, with uncommon powers of imagi- 
nation. True ; but poetry was not his 
-iorte ; he did not live, move, and have 
his being in the regions of fancy, but 

, in the regions of fact. He was a logi- 
cian, an expounder of principles, a path- 
finder in science, a practical philosopher, 
w^hose grand aim was tttility, the find- 
ing of things of practical usefulness to 
mankind. Now this is the very oppo- 
site of Shakespeare's character. While 
Bacon aimed to improve the physical and 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 



305 



social condition of men, Shakespeare 
strove to fill their souls with joyful or 
sad feelings, to inspire their minds 
with noble fancies, high thoughts and 
heroic aspirations. Besides, how should 
Lord Bacon, the companion of refined 
and noble people, the studious, serious, 
and learned nobleman, the philosophic 
Christian and practical moralist, who de- 
clared that he *' Vvas born in an age 
when religion was in no very prosperous 
state," and wished to rise to civil dig- 
nities in order that, by the exercise of 
his talents, he ''might effect something 
which would be profitable for the salva- 
tion of souls," — how should this man have 
fallen in love with such a reprobate as 
Falstaff, and have made him a leading 
character in three different plays ? Does 
not every one who is at all familiar with 
his writings feel that such a thing is con- 
trary to reason, to analogy and experi- 
ence ? A hen cannot lay ducks' eggs,'' 
nor a hound give birth to foxes. 

On the other hand, any one who is at 

all familiar with the life of Shakespeare, 
29 



3o6 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



such as it is, can see nothing remarkable 
in his being familiar with such men as 
Falstaff, Pistol, and Bardolph, and loving 
to portray them. Not only among the 
motley crowds of the London taverns 
and public-houses ; not only among the 
hangers-on at the theaters and places of 
public resort, but even among the Strat- 
ford roysterers, such characters are likely 
to have been among his familiars."^ 

Apart from his lack of ability for such 
a piece of work, Bacon's whole life, which 
is well known for its serious aims, forbids 
us to suppose he could have had a hand 
in the creation of such a character as 

* Mr. Spencei- T. Baynes has discovered some remarkable 
things that show how easily this may have been the case. As 
late as 1592, when the poet's father was still in difficulties, 
" it is officially stated, as the result of an inquiry into the num- 
ber who failed to attend the church service once a month, ac- 
cording to the statutory requirement, that John Shakespeare, 
with some others, two of zvhoin, curiously enojtgh, are named 
Fhiellen and Bardolph, ' come not to church for fear of pro- 
cess for debt.' " Dickens drew his father and his mother in 
Micawber and his wife. Is it not possible that Shakespeare 
drew his father and mother in one or more of his plays ? 
Why not .-* If we could only get behind the scenes, we might 
find that we know really more about Shakespeare and his 
family than we do about many a.man with a two-volume biog- 
raphy. 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. 307 

Falstafi. The practical, scientific, experi- 
mental, Christian philosopher, who spoke 
of himself as '* a servant of God," and all 
of whose writings breathe morality, sober- 
ness, and utilitarian wisdom, never could 
have given himself up to the creation of 
such a *' villanous, abominable misleader 
of youth," such a ''white-bearded Satan," 
as Falstaff. He would have thought he 
was, instead of ''effecting something 
profitable for the salvation of souls," 
demoralizing the youth of the country, 
by creating such a character. Bacon's 
writings are not distinguished for wit 
and humor, but for wisdom and sagacity, 
for " wise saws and modern instances ; " 
whereas Shakespeare and his characters, 
especially in the comedies, are the very 
embodiment of wit and humor, fun 
and frolic, bent upon fooling and being 
fooled "to the top of their bent!" 
Bacon labored to educate man socially, 
and to improve his material condition ; 
Shakespeare labored to amuse and in- 
struct him, to lighten his cares and en- 
liven his spirits, to "fill his eyes with 



3o8 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



'. pleasure and his ears with melody." He 
endeavored to soothe the troubled and 
care-worn spirit with wit and laughter ; 
to amuse the toil-worn artisan and 
anxious courtier by the exhibition of joy- 
ous carelessness and rash venturesome- 
ness ; he strove to shame the idler and 
the sluggard by setting before his eyes 
his country's heroes toiling and moiling 
for fame and honor. To do this well, he 
ransacked the literature of Europe ; he 
read not only all the best histories, 
the best legends, ancient and modern, 

, but all the light, romantic tales of 
France, Italy and Spain, the. famous old 
legends of popular heroes and heroines 
of Britain, and the lives of patriots, mar- 
tyrs, and statesmen everywhere. Charles 
Reade, on finding that Shakespeare bor- 
rowed so largely from all sources, used 
to call him, irreverently but significantly, 
'' the o^reat Warwickshire thief ! " 

What interest could Bacon find in all 
these light tales and amorous romances ? 
Were not such studies foreign to his 
tastes, as displayed by his writings? 



POR TRA YED B Y himself. 3()A 

Shakespeare, like the bee, could extract 
honey from them all ; he was the great ' 
alchemist who could transmute base 
metals into gold ; and so, indeed, could 
Bacon, but for very different purposes. 
Each followed the bent of his genius ; 
each worked for different objects ; pre- 
cisely as those do who read their writ- 
ings. Imagine William Cobbett compos- 
ing a five - act play! Imagine Charles 
Mathews or Theodore Hook writing a 
long, serious discourse on taxes ! 

'* To ask me to believe," says Mr. Sped- 
ding, the well-known biographer of Lord 
Bacon and editor of his works, address- 
ing Judge Holmes, whose book, ''The 
Authorship of Shakespeare," he says he 
has read from beginning to end, — ''To 
ask me to believe, that a man who was 
famous for a variety of other accomplish- 
ments, whose life was divided between 
public business, the practice of a labori- 
ous profession, and private study of the 
art of investloratlnor the material laws of 
nature, — a man of large acquaintance, of 
note from early manhood, and one of the 



310 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



busiest men of his time, but who was 
never suspected of wasting time in writ- 
ing poetry, and is not known to have 
written a single blank verse in all his life 
— to ask me to believe that this man was 
the author of those plays, that is to say, 
of fourteen comedies, ten historical 
dramas, and eleven tragedies, exhibiting 
the greatest, and the greatest variety of 
excellence that has been attained in that 
kind of composition, — is like asking me 
to believe that Lord Brougham was the 
author, not only of Dickens' works, but 
of Thackeray's and of Tennyson's be- 
sides." Now, if Mr. Spedding thought 
thus — a man who made a life-study of 
Bacon's works and who thoroughly un- 
derstood the character of his mind and 
the events of his life — how absurd it must 
be for any ordinary reader of Bacon to 
credit him with the writings of Shake- 
speare ! 

While nothing in Bacon's life and 
writings, therefore, justifies us in sup- 
posing that he vv^as familiar with the lives 
and manners of the rough-and-ready char- 



PORTRA VED B V HIM SELF. 



311 



acters that abound in Shakespeare's 
plays, Shakespeare's life and writings, 
show us that he was familiar with such 
characters, and knew all about them. 
It is generally allowed that Shallow 
and Silence were characters such as he 
had known and associated with in and 
around Stratford. Who were Mouldy, 
Shadow, Wart, Feeble, and Bullcalf but 
poor country clodhoppers, such as he had 
often seen and spoken to in the same 
region ? Who were Pistol, Poins, Bar- 
dolph, and Mrs. Quickly, but people such 
as he had seen in the taverns of London 
and elsewhere ? And why not Falstaff 
as well as the rest ? Were such people 
Lord Bacon's familiars ? We are sure 
they were not ; for, from the nature of the 
man, he could take no pleasure in their 
conversation, and would be the last per- 
son in the world to affect their company. 
How did Moliere, the son of the old- 
clothes dealer, learn the language and 
manners of the nobility of France ? 
Probably he had no better opportunity 
of becoming acquainted with the noble- 



3I2 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



men of the court of Louis XIV. than 
. Shakespeare had with those of the court 
of Elizabeth. Not only the Earl of 
Southampton, but William, Earl of 
Pembroke, and Philip, his brother. 
Earl of Montgomery, seem to have been 
the personal friends and patrons of 
Shakespeare : witness the words of 
Heming and Condell, v/ho dedicated the 
first complete edition of his works to 
these two last-named noblemen: "But 
since your lordships have been pleased to 
think these trifles somethinor heretofore, 
and have prosecuted both them, and 
their author living, with so much favor ; 
we hope that (they outliving him, and he 
not having the fate, common with some, 
to be executor to his own writings) you 
will use the same indulgrence towards 
them you have done unto their parent." 
They showed '' indulgence " toward the 
Poet ; that is, kindness and friendship, as 
expressed in the language of the time. 
How little they .imagined how greatly 
they honored themselves by this friend- 
ship ! 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



m 



I have already quoted Maglnn's say- 
ing : '' The reason why we know so little 
of the Poet is, that when his business 
was over at the theater, he did not 
mix with his fellow-actors, but stepped 
into his boat and rowed up to White- 
hall, there to spend his time with the 
Earl of Southampton, and other gen- 
tlemen about the Court." Why should 
it be surprising, that a man so sur- 
rounded, so befriended, and so enriched, 
should have learned the language and 
behavior of gentlemen, and have tried to 
become one of them himself ? 

The operations of genius, which are 
so mystical to others, are sometimes not 
perfectly explicable to the man of 
genius himself. When Hogg's publisher 
objected to some of his poems because 
he could not understand them, the poet 
indignantly replied : " Hoot, man, I dinna 
understand them mysel sometimes!" I 
doubt whether Shakespeare could tell, 
for instance, how he became so inti- 
mately acquainted with the heart of 
woman. He would probably say he 



314 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



divined it. By a sort of sixth sense, 
combined with laro-e common-sense, he 
succeeded in portraying her character 
so truly. Mrs. Siddons, the most majes- 
tic of Shakespearean actresses, declared 
that he seems to have known every 
feeling, every thought, every wish that 
enters a woman's heart. How absurd 
to bring an accusation of ignorance 
against such a man ! If he knew the 
very inmost heart and nature of woman, 
and could express her feelings, thoughts, 
and wishes so admirably, how much more 
those of his own sex, no matter of what 
rank? The genius of Shakespeare 
could surely mount into the region of 
nobility much more easily than the 
genius of Bacon could descend, drama- 
tically, into that of the commonalty ; and 
it is much more likely that Shakespeare, 
the student of human nature, should 
have acquired this marvelous insight in- 
to the thoughts and feelings of woman, 
than Lord Bacon, the sober student of 
syllogistic and practical philosophy. 

Shakespeare is all action, life, and poe- 



PORTRA YED BY HIMSELF. 



315 



try ; Bacon is all contemplation, calmness, 
and repose ; Shakespeare all imagination, 
wit, and humor ; Bacon all logic, science, 
and sense. " As far as we know," says 
a writer in Temple Bar, *' it would have 
been as impossible for Lord Bacon to 
portray character in action as it would 
have been foreign to Shakespeare's mind 
to have reasoned from propositions to a 
logical system." 



3i6 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHAPTER XX. 

BEN JONSON, BACON, AND SHAKESPEARE. 

T is well known that Lord Bacon en- 
gaged Ben Jonson to turn some of his 
philosophical writings into Latin, and 
the great philosopher treated the learned 
dramatist so well, that the latter ever 
spoke with respect and esteem of him. 
I have sometimes thought, what a pity 
Jonson did not avail himself of his ac- 
quaintance with Bacon to introduce his 
brilliant friend Shakespeare to him, and 
afterwards give an account of the inter- 
view ! What a delicious bit of reading 
that account v/oulcl be ! What editor 
would not give a thousand dollars for a 
report of that conversation ! I have no 
doubt each would have richly enjoyed 
the conversation of the other. But 
whither am I straying ? Very probably 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



317 



some of the Baconians will say that this 
is how Shakespeare became acquainted 
with Bacon, and came into the possession 
of the plays ! There is no telling what 
absurdities they may not commit. 

Now, if Bacon were really a dramatic 
author, writing such plays as his 
admirers suppose he wrote, is it likely 
that he would never have spoken of his 
plays, never have counselled about some 
passage, scene, or character in one of his 
plays, with the recognized dramatic 
authority of the day, the *'blg gun" of 
the stage, the famous dramatist whom he 
thus emplo3/ed and knew familiarly in a 
literary way ? And If he did so, is it 
likely that Jonson would never have 
mentioned the fact ? If he were the 
author of the plays attributed to Shake- 
speare, is it credible that honest Ben 
would have given Shakespeare the sole 
and entire credit for them, and eulogized 
him in the boundless way he did ? Is 
it not monstrous to suppose that this 
downright, outspoken, fearless man had 
turned conspirator, and acted such an 



3 1 8 ^^^^ ^ ^^ ^^ SHAKESPEA RE 

outrageously false and perfidious role as 
the Baconians imagine ? Consider for a 
moment what Ben Jonson, who was well 
acquainted with the life and works of 
Shakespeare, wrote of him : 

Soul of the age, 
Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage, 
My Shakespeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further, to make thee room : 
Thou art a monument without a tomb. 
And art alive still while thy book doth live, 
And we have wits to read, or praise to give. 

And then, after showing how he out- 
shone Lily, Kid, and Marlowe, and 
though he had ''small Latin and less 
Greek," did far surpass the poets of "in- 
solent Greece or haughty Rome," he 
continues : 

Triumph, my Britain ! thou hast one to show, 
To whom all scenes of Europe homage awe. 
He was not of an age, but for all time ! 
And all the Muses still were in their prime, 
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm. 
Nature herself was proud of his designs, 
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines; 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. om 

Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, 

As since she will vouchsafe no other wit. 

The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, 

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ; 

But antiquated and deserted lie. 

As they were not of Nature's family. 

Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 

To see thee in our waters yet appear ; 

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 

That so did take Eliza, and our James ! 

Could there be any higher praise ? 
Could there be any fuller or better appre- 
ciation of Shakespeare's genius ? Could 
this be written of one who never wrote 
the plays, Jonson and all the actors of 
Shakespeare's companies having been 
duped and deceived by Shakespeare ? 
Could Jonson so write, if there were a 
shadow of suspicion that he was not the 
author of the plays ? 

Then, again : if Jonson, the learned 
Greek and Latin scholar, appreciated 
the self-taught Shakespeare so highly, 
surely there must have been others 
who appreciated him just as highly ; 
and if he were so highly appreciated, 
even by the learned of his day how 



325 WILLIAM SHA1CESPEAR&. 

could Bacon be ashamed of claiming- the 
authorship of such works, if they were 
his ? or how could Shakespeare take 
such works from Bacon and palm them 
off as his own ? Mr. Donnelly claims 
that the knowledge of such authorship 
would be fatal to Bacon's political pros- 
pects. Could anything be more ab- 
surd? If Bacon were the father of the 
plays, he would rather throw his political 
prospects to the winds than disown or 
d^ny such offspring. 

Ben Jonson knew the man and his 
works ; he knew both Bacon and Shake- 
speare, and knowing both, he could 
not have been deceived, nor could he 
deceive. He knew how Shakespeare 
studied ; how he toiled, how he vvTote, 
and what he wrote ; he knew the char- 
acter and genius of the man, which no 
lover of the Poet ever appreciated better 
than he ; and remembering how admi- 
rably he conducted himiself, and what a 
pleasant companion he was, he cherished 
and loved his memory as a friend, as 
much as he admired and venerated his 



PORTkA VjEd By Mi Ms elf. 



321 



"genius as a poet. Knowing and esteem- 
ing Lord Bacon as he did, loving and 
admiring Shakespeare as he did, is it 
for a moment to be imagined that he 
went deHberately to work to pervert 
the truth, mock the dead, falsify the 
living, and deceive posterity for all 
time ? Such an idea is so monstrous, I 
am almost ashamed to ask the question. 

** You will not deny," says Mr. Sped- 
ding, addressing Judge Holmes, "that 
tradition goes for something ; that, in 
the absence of any reason for doubting 
it, the concurrent and undisputed testi- 
mony to a fact of all who had the best 
means of knowing it, is a reason for be- 
lieving it, or at least for thinking it more 
probable than any other given fact which 
is irreconcilable with it, and which is not 
so supported. On this ground alone, 
without inquiring farther, I believe that 
the author of the plays, published in 1623, 
was a man named William Shakespeare. 
It was believed by those who had the best - 
means of knowing, and I know nothing 
which should lead me to doubt it." This 



21 



322 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



is sane reasoning, conclusive I think, to 
those who think sanely. 

In his Apology, Lord Bacon speaks of 
having written a sonnet (he adds, quite 
naturally, '* though I profess not to be a 
poet "), tending to a reconciliation be- 
tween Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of 
Essex ; and this sonnet he says he 
showed to one of the Earl's friends, 
"who commended it." Is it conceivable 
that the man who could thus take a pride 
in showing a sonnet he had composed, 
and in mentioning the fact that it was 
favorably regarded by a friend, should 
have written the most superb tragedies 
and comedies the world ever saw, and 
never once, in speech or in writing, have 
spoken of them to any living soul ? 

We know that Shakespeare died in 
1616, and that his last play was written 
before 1612 ; we know that Bacon lived 
till 1626 — ten long years after Shake- 
speare's death — and that his last years 
were passed in perfect ease and quiet- 
ness. Why, if he were fond of dramatic 
composition, did he not compose, after 



POR TRA YED B V HIMSELF. ^ 2 3 

Shakespeare's death, at least one more of 
those Shakesperean plays of which he is 
supposed to be the author? Why, in the 
name of all that is reasonable, did he 
not, in the ripest, wisest, most expe- 
rienced, and most leisurely part of his 
life, throw off one of those divine dramas ^ 
that must now have come so easy to him ? 
Every proof, every sign, every vestige of 
evidence, every reasonable suspicion falls 
to the ground. 

The folio of 1623 is crammed with 
errors and blunders of every kind ; while 
Bacon's own works are perfectly correct 
im every particular : not a comma mis- 
placed, nor a blunder of any kind, is to 
be found in them. How comes it, then, 
that these are faultless, while the plays 
are bristling with errors? How comes it 
that these prose writings are so carefully 
corrected, while the poetical ones are , 
not ? Surely no sane person can fail to 
see that this is simply because the author 
of the latter was dead, and could not cor- 
rect the printed proofs of his works ; 
while the author of the former was liv- 



3H 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ing, and carefully corrected all he wrote 
before going to press. 

If the plays were Bacon's, how could 
he have allowed them to be collected 
by the friends and fellow-actors of the 
dramatist (1623), prepared for publica- 
tion, and printed with all manner of 
errors, interpolations, and blunders as 
the plays of Shakespeare ? Nay, more ; 
allowed them to be printed with lauda- 
tory verses and eulogiums on the spu- 
rious author, from various well-known 
hands, among them one from his friend 
Ben Jonson ! How could he have 
allowed those plays to be thus pub- 
lished, with the highest praise of the 
man who was not the author, and with- 
out a word of comment from him? To 
those who make such ridiculous asser- 
tions, I can only reply, in the words of 
Antony : 

O Judgment ! thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason ! 



rOHTHAYED BY HIMSELF, 



325 



CHAPTER XX. 

CONCLUSION. 

THE whole Baconian theory is so 
preposterous, I am ahnost ashamed 
to say another word about it ; but now 
that I am at it, I shall endeavor to finish 
it. A hundred things might be said to 
show its absurdity ; but I will content 
myself with but two or three more, 
which, I think, together with those argu- 
ments I have already given, will be suffi- 
cient to settle the matter forever. 

It is contended that because there are 
many expressions and thoughts in Shake- 
speare's writings that are to be found in 
Bacon's, these must have been written by 
the same hand. In this way, one might 
prove almost any writer of that day to 
have been the author of Shakespeare's 
plays. Nay, one might prove that some 



326 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



writer of the present day, or of the day 
before Shakespeare, was their author. 
There is nothing new under the sun. 
The very words I am now using, the very 
sentence I am now writing, and possibly 
every sentence in this book, may, in 
some shape, be pointed out in some other 
author. We are all of us constantly bor- 
rowing words and expressions one from 
another, or unconsciously repeating what 
was uttered before. In every age, cer- 
tain thoughts and certain expressions are 
more or less predominant ; and to argue 
that because one literary man uses in his 
works expressions or thoughts similar to 
those of another, these must have been 
all written by the same hand, is the 
height of absurdity. By such reasoning, 
anything, as I said, may be proved. 
Proved.^ Why, has not somebody 
proved, or pretended to prove, that our 
Saviour never existed ? Did not Berke- 
ley prove that there is no such thing as 
matter ? Anything may be proved, after a 
fashion ; and I have no doubt that some- 
body will, in the next generation, prove 



PORTRA YED B Y HIMSELF, 327 

that Shakespeare never existed at all. 
But as a matter of fact, even this kind of 
''proof" can by no means be allowed. 
If anybody should know the style of • 
Bacon as compared with the style of any 
of his contemporaries, that man is Mr. , 
Spedding, who was familiar with almost 
every line that Bacon wrote. Now hear 
what this gentleman says of these sim- 
ilar expressions, these parallelisms, col- 
lected by Judge Holmes: "Shakespeare 
may have derived a good deal from 
Bacon : he had no doubt read the ' Ad- 
vancement of Learning' and the first 
edition of the ' Essays' ; and most likely 
had frequently heard Bacon speak in the 
Courts and the Star Chamber. But 
among all the parallelisms which you 
have collected, with so much industry, 
to prove the identity of the writers, I 
have not observed one in which I should 
not myself have inferred, from the differ- 
ence of style, a difference of hand. .... 
I doubt whether there are five lines to- 
gether to be found in Bacon which could 
be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five 



328 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

lines in Shakespeare which could be mis- 
taken for Bacon, by one who is familiar 
with the several styles and practiced in 
such observation." Then he goes on to 
show that style, like the hand-writino- of 
different persons, is something which, 
though apparently similar on a superfi- 
cial examination, is found to be alto- 
gether different on a close examination. 
It is painful to see how Shakespeare 
has been dragged down into the dust 
by some of the Baconians, Now that 
they have fallen foul of him, and found 
him out to be an impostor, there is noth- 
ing too odious they can say of him : he 
is an ignoramus, a deceiver, a drunken 
sot, a mere money-grabber ; and so on. 



O mighty Poet ! Dost thou lie so low ? 

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, 

Shrunk to this little measure ? 

When Berkeley proved that there is no 
such thing as matter, Byron said it was 
no matter what he said; and when the 
Baconians prove that Bacon wrote 



POR TRA YED B Y HIMSELR 



329 



Shakespeare's plays, and that Shake- 
speare was an ilHterate Ignoramus who 
could hardly sign his own name, etc., it 
is no matter what they say, we are not 
nfolnpf to heed them. If there were no 
madness in the world, sanity would not 
be properly appreciated. 

In his last will and testament. Lord 
Bacon gave particular directions as to 
the disposal of his books and manu- 
scripts; and in this document occurs the 
well-known sentence : " For my name 
and memory, I leave it to men's charita- 
ble speeches, to foreign nations, and to 
the next ages." Now, If he had been 
the author of the plays. Is It at all likely, 
is it In any way conceivable, that he 
would have left them unmentioned, 
unregarded, In this Important docu- 
ment ? Did they contain such deadly 
thrusts against government that, like 
Junius, he feared vengeance on his de- 
scendants, of whom he had none? Did 
these plays, that so '' did take Eliza and 
our James," contain such deadly treason? 
Or will any sane man maintain that 



330 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Bacon was unaware of their merit, and 
thought them too poor to own ? Even 
if he were afraid of the verdict of his 
own generation — which, as we have 
seen, was universally favorable — he could 
certainly have left them without appre- 
hension, like his ''name and memory," to 
" the next ages." But it seems absurd 
to argue the question any further. Had 
it not been for the scantiness of the ma- 
terials for Shakespeare's life, nobody 
would ever have dared to raise a doubt 
concerning his right to what went under 
his name ; and had it not been for the 
scantiness of these materials, his delinea- 
tion of himself, and of other well-known 
characters in his plays, would probably 
have been noticed long ago. 

Bacon had done a great life-work in 
other spheres. He was an active lawyer 
and politician, a courtier and constitu- 
tional adviser of the Crown, a judge of 
the highest court in England, an original 
and profound investigator of natural 
phenomena, and a voluminous miscella- 
neous writer. He had crowded the work 



POR TKA YED B Y HIMSELP. 



33t 



of several lives into these spheres alone ; 
and surely his activity in all these vari- 
ous occupations, all of them more or less 
congruous, is sufficient, without making 
him out a great dramatic poet as well, a 
quality altogether foreign to his charac- 
ter ; and crediting him with the work of 
another life, the greatest, but one, of all 
the lives that ever were lived. **That 
a human being," says Mr. Spedding, 
** possessed of the faculties necessary to 
make a Shakespeare should exist, is ex- 
traordinary ; that a human being pos- 
sessed of the faculties necessary to make 
a Bacon should exist, is extraordinary ;^ 
that two such human beings should have 
been living in London at the same time, 
is more extraordinary still ; — but that 
one man should exist possessing the 
faculties necessary to rhake both^ would 
have been the most extraordinary thing 
of all." I should think so ; so extraordi- 
nary that it is simply impossible. 

Besides, has anybody ever heard of 
a dramatic author writing a play, — nay, 
thirty-seven plays, — which he never de- 



332 



William shakespeare 



sired to see acted, or in the proper 
presentation or printing of which he 
never took any interest whatever ? No 
such author ever existed ; no such man 
ever existed. Bacon was a man who 
sought power and influence in every- 
thing he did ; and even if he had had 
the abiHty to write the plays, it is child- 
ish to suppose he would not have rnade 
the most of them. Not only the king 
and queen, the courtiers and the fore- 
most men of the time, but all the nobil- 
ity of England, would have been at his 
feet ; and he would never have been 
obliged, in order to live respectably, 
to sue for assistance at court, or to 
marry the daughter of a London alder- 
man. 

Still more : there are Bacon's letters ; 
letters addressed to various persons and 
on all manner of subjects ; letters of 
friendship and letters of business ; letters 
on state affairs and letters on domestic 
affairs ; letters on literature and letters 
on philosophy. Surely, if he had written 
the plays, some mention of them would 



POk TEA YED B V HIMSklk ^ ^ j 

have been made In some of these letters ; 
surely either he or his correspondents 
would have had something to say about 
them. But no , not a word on the sub- 
ject is to be found. He could not have 
been such a god as to have written the 
plays without knowing it himself ; hardly 
a divinity could do that ; yet I have 
no doubt some of the Baconians are 
capable of believing something of this 
sort, for this is about as reasonable as 
the rest of their logic. Like Columbus 
he discovered a new continent, and 
added a new world to literature, without 
knowing it ! 

There is his intimate friend Hobbes, a 
voluminous writer, who knew him well, 
and who has a good deal to say of Bacon : 
indeed, he might have known equally 
well Shakespeare himself, — for his life 
covered nearly a whole century, 1588— 
1679 ; — yet he has never a word to say of 
Bacon having written a play, or of his 
having had any connection with the stage. 
Hobbes was his secretary, I believe, for 
a time ; he wrote, examined, and studied 



334 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



for him ; so if any man ought to know 
something of his master s writings, he 
ought ; and if any man would have 
mentioned the fact, had his master 
devoted himself to play-writing, he 
would have done so. 

Bacon lived, in fact, in the white heat 
and bright light of public life ; he kept 
a great house, and had many servants, 
secretaries, dependants, and friends ; his 
acts were universally known and criti- 
cised ; and to imagine that such a man, 
under such circumstances, should have 
written the finest dramas ever composed, 
thirty-seven in number, — dramas that 
were acted during twenty odd years, 
before the ^Itte of the world, — without 
anybody knowing or suspecting, not 
even himself, that he was the author of 
them, is simply to the last degree pre- 
posterous and absurd. 

One word more, and I have done. 
Does the reader remember how Lord 
Bacon came to his death? He was rid- 
ing along in his coach one stormy winter 
day, when, seeing the ground covered 



PORTRAYED BY HIMSELF. 



335 



with snow, he began to wonder whether 
snow would not preserve flesh from de- 
cay ; and stepping out of his coach into 
a poultry-shop, he bought a fowl, and 
with his own hands stuffed it with snow. 
This operation brought on a chill ; and 
feeling ill, he was compelled to stop at 
the house of a friend, Lord Arundel's, 
where, being put into an unaired bed, he 
contracted a fever, of which he died. 
Now let any man, tolerably familiar with 
Shakespeare's dramas, imagine for a mo- 
ment whether the author of Hamlet and 
Lear was likely, on observing the ground 
covered v/ith snov^% — 

beautiful snow, 
Filling the sky and the earth below, 
Over the house-tops, over the street, 
Over the heads of the people you meet. 
Flying to kiss a fair lady's cheek ; 
Clinging to lips in a frolicsome freak ! 
Beautiful snow ! from the heavens above, 
Pure as an angel and fickle as love ! 

let him imagine, I say, for a moment, 
whether the author of these plays would 
at such a sight, engage In speculating 



336 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



as to whether snow would preserve 
dead chickens from decay, and actu- 
ally stop and stuff one with his own 
hands to see if it would remain un- 
tainted ! Would not the mind of Shake- 
speare have been engaged in reflections 
of quite a different nature ? The action 
of Lord Bacon was quite in keeping 
with his character as a practical utili- 
tarian philosopher; but it was entirely 
out of keeping with the nature of the 
speculative, dreamy, castle-building char- 
acter-studying Poet. Shakespeare, it is 
true, hit upon great physical truths by 
poetic inspiration ; but he hardly went 
to work to find them out by actual 
experiment. He was more interested, 
naturally, in human character, in human 
aims and hopes, in beauty of expression, 
in the power of thought and example, 
than in the discovery of useful truths 
in natural science. 

These considerations may not; it is 
true, influence the views of any man 
who is bound to be singular in such mat- 
ters ; but to one who is accustomed to 



FOR TRA YED B Y HIMSELF. 337 

rational thinking and reasonable con- 
clusions, they must form a chain of evi- 
dence, strong as links of iron, in proof 
of the fact that the author of Shake- 
speare's plays and that of Bacon's phil- 
osophical works are not, and can not be, 
one and the same person. We may, 
therefore dismiss the subject with the 
assurance, that notwithstanding the wide- 
spread plot to destroy Shakespeare's 
reputation and to erase his name from 
literature, he " still lives," and will con- 
tinue to live, as long as the language 
lives in which his immortal works are 
written. Like the Prince in whom he 
portrayed his own character, 

he still survives, 
To mock the expectation of the world, 
To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out 
Rotten opinion, who hath writ him down 
After his seeming. 
22 



INDEX. 



Age of Elizabeth, its mental 

activity, 32. 
Arnold, Matthew, his descrip- 
tion of Shelley's charac- 
ter, 148. 
Bacon, Delia, her book on 
Shakespeare, 137. 
her fate, 138 [note|. 
Bacon, Lord, his ability, 20 ; 
117, 118. 
his birthplace, 267. 
his travels, 267. 
wrote the works of Marlowe, 
Montaigne, and Burton, 

274; 
his great ability, 303, 304. 
could not create Falstaff, 

306. 
described by Mr. Spedding, 

309- 
compared with Shakespeare, 

314- 
his Apology, 322. 
his latter years, 322, 323. 
his own works free from 

printers' errors, 323. 
his last will and testament, 

329- 
his great and active life, 

330- 
sought power and mfluence, 

.332. 
his letters, 332. 
lived in the white light of 

public life, 334. 
how he came by his death, 

334- 



Baconians, their attempt to 
rob the Poet of his fame, 

135- 
how they go to work, 

262. 
may prove anything by their 

methods, 263. 
Bagehot, Walter, what he 

says of mental training, 

.31- 
his comparison of Shake- 
speare, Scott, and Goethe, 
58. 
Baynes, Spencer T., his ac- 
count of the Poet's mother, 

157- 
his account of the Poet's 

early career, 210. 
what he found in the 
Stratford records, 306 
[note]. 

Beaumont, Francis, his de- 
scription of the Mermaid 
meetings, 126. 

Berkeley, Bishop, what he 
proved. 32S. 

Bible, the French and the Bis- 
hops', known by Shake- 
speare, 200. 

Black, Mr., his opinion of 
Shakespeare, 238. 

Bluemantle, Mr. Charles 
Athill, what he say.s of 
Shakespeare's grant of 
arms, 300. 

Brown, Charles Armitage, his 
view of the Sonnets, 113. 



339 



340 



INDEX. 



Brown, Charles Arm! tage, his 
proofs that Shakespeare 
had been ia Italy, 216. 
expresses regret that the 
Poet had not more ene- 
mies, 236. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, his 
life and the author's ad- 
miration of hini, 6. 
what he shows with re- 
gard to Charles III., 274. 

Bunyan, John, what he was, 
21. 

Burke and Fox, 26. 

Burns, Robert, how his early 
life was spent, 2t, 22. 
his college at Dunfermline, 

.31- 
his conversation, 125. 

Butler, Benjamin, believes in 
Mr. Donnelly's " discov- 
eries," 268. 

Byron, Lord, eccentric as the 
Prince, 47. 
what he said of Berkeley's 
proposition, 328. 

Carlyle, Thomas, his reference 
to Shakespeare's love of 
laughter, 64. 

Catholic doctrines, the Poet's 
leaning toward, 258. 

Cipher, the, its fallacy, 295. 

Classics, the study of, not 
always the best, 31. 

Clannishness among English- 
men in London, 189. 

Channing, Dr., what he says 
of genius, 205. 

Character of poets, 146. 

Chettle, Henry, his reference 
to Shakespeare, 234. 
bewitched with the Poet, 

237- 
Cobbett, William, contrasted 
with Matthews and Hook, 

309- 
C obham. Lord, 93. 



College training, worse than 

useless to some men, 30. 
Contemporaries, S'kespeare's, 

225-243. 
Congreve, the dramatist, what 
he thought of authorship, 
301. 
Conversation, some men of 
genius greater in, than in 
their works, 124, 125. 
Crow, upstart, 229. 
Cryptogram, the great, 278. 
Curran, John Philpot, his ex- 
perience at the debating 
club, 31. 
Dauphin the, his present to 

the Prince, 108. 
Davidson, Professor Thomas, 
his visit to Mr. Donnelly 
and account of " The 
Great Cryptogram," 265. 
can make nothing of The 

Cipher, 271. 
his final condemnation of 
it, 298, 
Deer-stealing adventure, 73, 
84-90. 
Halliwell's description of, 
84. 
Derby, Lord, 214. 
Donnelly, Ignatius, discovers 
a cipher, 4. 
what he says of Shake- 
speare not claiming the 
plays, 132. 
his opprobrious treatment 

of the Poet, 224. 
claims that the Poet never 

saw the sea, 224. 
his "Great Cryptogram," 

262. 
Professor Davidson's ac- 

count'of it, 265. 
his ridiculous conclusions 

266, 267. 
discovers the vastness of his 
cipher, 272. 



INDEX. 



341 



Donnelly, Ignatius, his char- 
acter, 275. 
his great work, 270-297. 
Dramatic authors, 331. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, what 
he said of a collegiate 
education, 30. 
preferred translations, 207. 
Experience in Germany, the 

writer's, 115. 
Experience, no field like it for 

poets and novelists, 202. 
Experimental knowledge, its 

value. III. 
Factotum," the Poet so-called 

by Greene, 226. 
Falstaff, the spell by which 
he holds the Prince, 64. 
how he talks after the rob- 
bery, 74-84. 
asks, " Am I a wood-man ? " 

85. 
his origin and character, 

92-94. 
compared with the Prince, 
from Fuller's words, 128. 
a whole century of wit, sense, 
and humor in him, 204. 
Fat soils and weeds, 112. 
Fletcher, Laurence, a col- 
league of Shakespeare's, 
269. 
probably a townsman of his, 
270. 
Florio, John, the instructor of 

Shakespeare, 211. 
Folio of 1623, the number of 
copies printed, etc., 133. 
what it contained, 134, 135, 

note, 
crammed with errors, 323. 
Foul play, Shakespeare res- 
cued from suspicion of, 5. 
Fox, Charles James, how he 

got his education, 25. 
Francis, Sir Philip, what he 
said of Fox, 25. 



Francis, the pot-boy, scene be- 
tween him and the Prince, 

how Mr. Donnelly regards 
him, 66. 
French and German books, 

207. 
Fuller, his account of Shake- 

peare's talk, 127. 
Fulman, Rev. Wm., his ref- 
erence to Shakespeare, 
86. 
Gadshill exploit, a version of 
the Poet's deer-stealing 
adventure, 92. 
Genius, a man of, will study, 
19. 
the workings of, 21. 
what some men of, have 

done, 21, 22. 
what supplies the Prome- 
thean spark of, 23. 
definition of, 23. 
the achievements of, not 

from books, 29, 30. 
how it works its wonders, 

47,48. 
what the man of, is, 122. 
the conversation of, 122, 

123. 
thinks more of some in- 
ferior quality than of that 
which distinguishes him, 
302. 
German professor, his exploit, 

271. 
Goethe, compared with Scott 
and Shakespeare, 58, 59, 
61. 
what he says of a fictitious 
character, 206. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, his senti- 
ments those of Shake- 
speare, 242, 243. 
Gosson, Stephen, his descrip- 
tion of the stage in Shake- 
peare's time, loi. 






342 



WDEX. 



Grant of arms, Shakespeare's, 

300. 
Greek and Latin training, 27. 

worshippers of, 29. 
Greene, the dramatist, 50. 
his sneering allusion to 
Shakespeare, 225-230. 
Greatness in Shakespeare's 
time and in our time, 131. 
Gutenberg, the value of his 

invention, 134. 
Hale, Edward Everett, what 
he said of the men of 
Elizabeth's time, t^t^. 
Halliwell, his account of deer- 
stealing adventure, 84. 
his discovery concerning 
Shakespeare's character- 
names, 90. 
his account of the Poet's 
character, 178. 
Hamlet, Monsieur Taine's view 
of, 112. 
Nash's play upon the name, 

231. 
the author of, well acquaint- 
ed with law, 232. 
the earlier Hamlet of Mr. 
Phillipps, 237. 
Hathaway, Anne, her union 
with the Poet a happy 
one, 239. 
Hazlitt, what he said of a 

classical training, 30. 
Hemin^_ and Condell, their 
dedication, 312. 
statues will be erected to 
them, 35. 
Henry, Patrick, how he spent 
his time, 24. 
his power and influence, 25. 
Henry, Prince, his character 
that of the Poet, 7. 
compared with the Poet, 8, 9. 
his history, 10, 11. 
the Poet's sympathy with 
him, 12. 



Henry, Prince, the popular 
idea of his character, 14. 
figures in four plays, 35. 
how he appears in open- 
ing scenes of Henry IV., 

his knowledge and ability, 

. 45. 46. 
his character, 46. 
his accomplishments, 48. 
his aversion to evil-doing, 

48, 49- 
compared with the Poet, 49, 

50- 
scene between him and 
Francis the pot-boy 51- 

. 57- 

how he loves the people, 

^ 63. 

how he mingled among 
them, 66. 

not so bad as his compan- 
ions, 70. 

resemblance to Hamlet, 71, 
72. 

predictions concerning him, 

95- 

acts for once unlike him- 
self, lOI. 

where his character comes 
out most strongly, 139. 

loves peace and hates blood- 
shed, 140. 

how he resembles a poet in 
his humors, 146. 

has a merciful disposition, 

his interviews with his fa- 
ther, 154. 

his conduct toward the Chief 
Justice. 160, etc. 

compared with his brother 
John, 167, 170. 

his gentle and merciful 
character, 170-176. 

how he resembled the Poet, 
248. 



tNDEX. 



343 



Henry Prince, why the Poet 

could stand for him, 249- 

252. 
his conduct before the 

battle of Agincourt, 250, 

251. 
his hearty sympathy with 

his army, 254. 
his last quoted speech, 

255- 

some other points m which 

he may stand for the 

Poet, 257. 
his love of punning, his 

religious belief, 257-259. 
his sympathy with the peo- 
ple, 261. 
Henry IV., its great popularity 

and its superiority, 203. 
the Poet, the sole author 

of, 244. 
where its names come from, 

246. 
shortened in the quartos, 

247- 

Henry V., see Henry, Prince. 

Henry V., the old play so- 
called, what Mr. Hudson 
says of it, 244. 

Henslowe, what his diary 
shows, 181. 

HobI)e£, his knowledge of 
Paeon, 333 

Hogg, the Scottish poet, 313. 

Hoiiashed, the Poet's great 
authority, 10. 

Holmes, Judge, his work on 
Shakespeare, 263, 264. 

Hotspur, the l^rince's mag- 
nanimity toward, 71. 

Hugo, Victor, what he saj-s of 
Shakespeare's conflagra- 
tion, 132. 

Human nature, the same in 
prince and peasant, 11. 

Interviewers, reporters, none 
in the Poet's time, 130. 



Irving, Washington, his 
opinion of Shakespeare's 
youth, 95. 
John, Prince, contrasted with 

his brother, 167, 168. 
Johnson, Dr., his conversa- 
tion, 125. 
his sarcasm, 267. 
Jonson, Len, 129. 

his testimony as to Shake- 
speare's knowledge and 
studiousii'jss, 200. 
his w^ay of wriling plays, 206. 
the friend of liacon, 316. 
his eulogy uf Shakespeare, 

how well he knew Shake- 
speare, 320. 

Junius, describing Fox, 27. 

Knight, Mr., his opinion of the 
Prince, 139. 

Letter-writing, familiar, little 
practiced in the Poet's 
time, 130. 

Life and character of a liter- 
ary man, where to look 
for these, 4. 

Lincoln, Abraham, how 
trained, 22. 

Lucy, Sir Thomas, satire on, 
87, 83. 

Macau! a V, T. B., 129. 

Maginn, Dr., tells why we 
know so little of Shake- 
speare, 191. 
what he says of the Poet's 

learning, 207, 208. 
his criticism of C. T. Brown's 
suggestion concerning the 
travels of the Poet, 221. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 50. 

Martineau, Harriet, confirms 
the opinion of C. T. 
Brown, 221. 

Massinger, his life, 122. 

Measure for Measure^ when 
played, 118. 



344 



INDEX. 



Moliere, his education, 28. 
where he learned the lan- 
guage of the nobility, 312. 

Montaigne's Essays, read by 
Shakespeare, 212. 

Montgomery, Earl of, 198. 

Morgan, Appleton, his decla- 
ration touching Shake- 
speai-e, 261. 
his books on Shakespeare, 
261. 

Morgan, Lady, what she says 
of Shakespeare's knowl- 
edge, 220. 

Names of dramatic characters, 
the Poet takes his from 
those of his neighbors, 
249. 

Nash, Thomas, a friend of 
Greene's, 230. 
his reference to Shake- 
speare, 231. 

Novelists, how they have por- 
trayed themselves, 201, 
202. 

Noverint, the Poet so-called 
by Nash, 231. 

Oldcastle, Sir John, 93. 

his character in the old 
play, 245. 

Osborne, Ralph Bernal, what 
he learned at college, 30. 

Otway, his life, 122. 

Parallelisms, 325-328. 

Pembroke, Earl of, 198. 

Peele, Geo., dramatist, 50. 

Phillipps, Halliwell, shows 
how Shakespeare portray- 
ed real characters, 96. 
his account of the events 

of the Poet's life, 122. 
what he says of Willis's 

stage-play, 187. 
what he says of "the pro- 
vincial tie," 189, 
his account of the Poet's 
relations to his family, 240. 



Phillipps Halliwell, his ac- 
count of actors and the 
stage in the Poet's time, 
275. 

Pisa, what kind of a place it 
is, 217. 

Players, the, of the Poet's 
time, 184. 

Prince Henry, see Heniy, 
Prince. 

Reporters, diarists, inter- 
viewers, none in the Poet's 
time, 130. 

Robbery, scene after the, 'ji- 

Rowe, his account of the 
deer-stealing adventure, 
87. 

Scott, Walter, compared with 
Shakespeare in his love 
of the people, 58-62. 
his striking saying, 60. 
his low esteem of fame, 301. 

Scottish scenery, the Poet's 
description of, 269. 

Self-educated men, 19, 20, 21, 
22. 
their college, 31. 
graduates of a printing- 
office, 31. 
their power, whence it 
comes, 33. 

Shallow, Justice, his appear- 
ance in one scene, 97- 

lOI. 

Shakespeare, Anne, her mem- 
ory revered by her 
children, 237, 238. 
lived happily with the 
Poet, 239, 240. 

Shakespeare, John, the Poet's 
father, how he figures in 
the Stratfordian records, 

90- . . . 
a politician, and a man of 

no mean character, 154. 

his rule over Stratford, 

J 55- 



Index. 



345 



Shakespeare, John, a man of 
superior character, 156. 
mentioned in Stratford 
records for not attend- 
ing church, 306. 
Shakespeare, Judith, a novel 

by Mr. Black, 238. 
Shakespeare, Mary, the poet's 
mother, her influence on 
her son, 1 57 . 
lives till 1 608, 243. 
Shakespeare, Wm., books 
printed concerning him, 
I. 
all the world interested in 

him, I. 
his intellectual power, 2. 
the father of German 

literature, 2. 
his birthplace a Mecca, 3. 
the glory of the English- 
speaking race, 3. 
. the author's presentation of 
his life, its satisfaction, 

5- 
rescued from a suspicion 

of foul play, 5. 
his character delineated in 

that of Prince Henry, 7, 

8, 9, etc. 
his history compared with 

that of the Prince, 8. 
his early career, 8, 9. 
his large sympathy with 

the Prince, 12, 13. 
the popular idea of his 

character, 14. 
direct comparison from 

the play, 16, 17, 18. 
how he came by his 

knowledge, 18, 19. 
his education better than 

a classic one, 27. 
his early life compared 

with that of Moliere, 29. 
the world alive with dis- 
cussion in his time, 32. 



Shakespeare, Wm., learned 
more from conversation 
than from books, y^. 

his wit-combats with Ben 
Jonson, 44. 

like the Prince a lover of 
good conversation, 45. 

compared with the Prince, 

48; 49. 50- 

his patience with dul- 
ness, 52, 53. 

the pranks he played with 
, brother actors, 57. 

his love of the people, 58. 

compared with Goethe 
and Scott in this re- 
spect, 58-62. 

his delineation of this 
trait in the Prince, 63. 

his fondness for wit and 
laughter, 64. 

resemblance to the Prince 
in this respect, 65, 66. 

a man of the people, 67. 

his use of his own ad- 
ventures in his plays, 
87. 

drew the likenesses and 
adopted the names of 
his neighbors, 90. 

where he got the Gadshill 
exploit, 93. 

had a living representa- 
tive for nearly every one 
of his characters, 94. 

example from Taming of 
The Shreiv^ 96. 

" turning past evils to 
advantages," 103. 

how he drew from his own 
experience in delineat- 
ing the Prince, 107. 

how he acquired his 
knowledge, 107 ; also, 
47, 48. 

compared with Caesar, 
Antony, etc., 112. 



34^ 



INDEX. 



Shakespeare, Wm., his life in 

the Sonnets, 112. 
his associations with the 

nobility, 115. 
his early experiences as an 

actor, 116. 
the events of his life, 121- 

nis conversation, 125 • 

his indifference to fame, 

.132- . 
his claim to his plays, 

132 [note], 
nearly meets the fate of 

yEschylus, 132. 
how regarded by the great 

critics, 136. 
loves peace and hates 

bloodshed, 139, 140. 
his modesty, 143. 
compared with the Prince 

in this respect, 144. 
compared with soldier 

poets and philosophers, 

149. 
helped his father, T55. 
had his own father in 

mind when writing the 

scenes between the 

Prince and his father, 

158. 
what his contemporaries 

said of him, 176. 
character described by 

Hudson, 177. 
knew some of the players 

before he left Stratford, 

185. 
welcomed by the actors 

at their London home, 

188. 
his progress in London, 

190. 
why we know so little of 

him, 191. 
his career natural, 191, 

192. 



Shakespeare, Wm., how rapid- 
ly he wrote, 192. 

his career in London, 194- 
198. 

how hard he studied, 199, 
200. 

how he portrayed himself, 
201. 

did not invent plots, nor 
men and women, 205. 

character-painting his forte, 
205. 

how he wrote his plays, 
206. 

his training, 209. 

what he studied Greek 
for, 209. 

Baynes' account of his 
early career, 210. 

how be learned French 
and Italian, 21, 

proofs that he had seen 
Italy, 216. 

what other countries he may 
have seen, 222. 

his exact knowledge of the 
Continent, 223. 

which came from actual 
observation, 223, 224. 

the opprobrious epithets ap- 
plied to him b}' Mr. Don- 
nelly, 224. 

references to him by his 
contemporaries, 225. 

had surely studied law, 
231-232. 

malicious charge against 
him, 233-235. 

his home-iife, 238. 

what Mr. Phillipps says of 
this, 240. 

his heart always in Strat- 
ford, 240-243. 

how the Poet came to 
represent himself in the 
Prince, 248. 



INDEX, 



347 



Shakespeare, Wm., no man 
ever realized so fully the 
troubles, cares, anxieties 
and sorrows of a king, 253. 

compared with the Prince 
in his love of punning, 257. 

in his sharp observations 
of men, 258. 

in his religious belief, 258 ; 

his dislike of the Puritans, 
259, 260. 

was probably a Papist, 258 

his sympathy with the peo- 
ple, 261 [note]. 

his descriptions of the sea 
and of Scottish scenery 
266, 269. 

singular fate, .viih regard to 
his plays. 2, j. 

loss of his library, 274. 

his chief works lost but for 
Heming and Condell, 275. 

his regard for wealth and 
rank, 301, 302. 

may have painted his fa- 
ther and mother, 306. 

what he studied, 30S. 

where he found his char- 
acters, 311. 

Shamefully treated by Ba- 
conians, 328. 

read the works of Bacon, 327. 

final comi)arison of, with 
Bacon, y^^-ZZl- 
Shelley, the poet, described 

by Matthew Arnold, 148. 
Shrew, Taming of The, 217. 
Siddons, Mrs., what she said 
of Shakespeare's women, 

314-. 

Sly, Christopher, a real char- 
acter, 196. 

" Small Latin and less Greek," 
20S. 

Smalley, G. W., what he says 
of " The Great Crypto- 
gram,' ' 298. 



Solomon, how he obtained his 
knowledge no. 

Southampton, earl of, the 
friend of the Poet, 191, 
198, 213. 
captain of a vessel in the ex- 
pedition against Spain and 
commander of a squadron 
under Essex, 226. 

Spedding, Mr., his reply to 
Judge Holmes, 309, 321. 
what he says of the paral- 
lelisms, 327. 
compares Bacon and Shake- 
speare, 331. 

Stage, the, in the poet's time, 
117 [note]. 

Strange, Lord, the patron of 
players, 215. 

Stratford-on-Avon, loved by 
the Poet, 241, 242, 243. 

Swift, Dean, his ambition, 302. 

Taine, M., finds the Poet's life 
in the Sonnets, 112. 

Tawny ground, French soil, 
223. 

Teaching without book, its 
superiority, 32. 

Theater, the, in Shakespeare's 
time, 180-1S2. 

Translations, preferable, 207. 

Truth, how discovered, 6. 

'• Turning past evils to advan- 
tages," 103. 

Tylney, master of revels, his 
mention of " Mr. Shax- 
berd," 119. 

Willis, his account of a stage- 
play, 186. 

Venus and Adonis, by whom 
printed, 189. 
dedicated to Southampton, 
213. 

Visor, satire on, 97. 

Voltaire, what he said of his 
college life, 30. 
what he says of money-mak- 
ing, 123. 



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